Take The Long Way Home
by Dark Caustic
Summary: How do you know that somebody loves you? When they kiss you? When they come back? When they stay? Or is it only real once you hear it, once they say it, that thing that's always been true: I love you. (Coauthored with Catchclaw on Ao3 and tumblr)
1. Chapter 1

When Dean was 15, he fell in love with this girl named Shannon.

She had brown hair, the kind that goes gold in the sun, and green eyes, I think.

No, blue.

Yeah, blue, because he used to call them sapphires all the time which I always get mixed up with emeralds in my head, and so, yeah. Blue.

We were living in Maryland, in the little slip that's out near the mountains, tucked in between Pennsylvania and West Virginia. That was the one cool thing about the place for me, that there were so many states so close together like that. I stared at that page in the atlas for days when we first moved in, and I made all these elaborate plans about buying a house in just the right place so I could make breakfast in Maryland and take a shower in Pennsylvania and watch TV in West Virginia. I even drew a little diagram—on the back of one of my notebooks, I think—and showed it to Dean after dinner one night when I was supposed to be getting ready for bed.

He studied it, really looked at it hard, and I loved him for that. Even then, as a kid, I knew that flights of fancy or even flashes of imagination were, at best, utterly wasted on Dad.

"Looks good," Dean said, leaning back on the bed. Mine. "But there's something missing."

My face crumpled like the cheap lined paper inside. I studied the outline again and felt my eyes go smeary, kicking myself for showing it to him, for even caring what he thought. "It was a dumb idea," I mumbled. "Forget it."

He made this exasperated huff like he did all the time, it seemed like, and swooped over, tapped his finger on the page. "Dude, calm down. It's awesome. It's just—where'm I sleeping? Don't see my bedroom on here."

I turned my head and he was smiling at me. So I had to smile, too. Easier to smile than to try and explain. "Oh!" I said, fumbling for my pencil. "Yeah. You're right. Sorry. I'm sorry."

He waggled the notebook at me. "Less sorry. More drawing."

I reached down and fished my good pencil, the mechanical one I used for math, out of my backpack and scrambled back beside him, wiggling a little under his grin. He slapped the picture in my lap and leaned in, peered over my shoulder as I worked.

"Put my room in Pennsylvania. Yeah, yeah, right there. And draw a pinball machine in the corner, ok? Wait! No! A foosball table. Yeah. That's way better."

I may have been the one holding the pencil, but he was the one drawing the lines.

"Ok, ok," I huffed. "Geez. You're blocking the light."

He ruffled my hair. "You're a block."

"Wow, Dean, you're so creative," I groaned.

He snorted, shifted so quick on his knees that his amulet beaned me in the ear. "I ain't the artist in the family, kiddo. That's for damn sure."

That's one of the reasons he fell for Shannon, he said. Because of her art.

She was in his drama class, some stupid elective thing he whined about for the first few weeks like it was torture. It sounded great to me:reading plays—which I didn't even know you could do, honestly—and then acting them out seemed way cooler to me than the ditzy arts and crafts they made us do in fourth period.

"No, but," Dean said, flinging his fork around his face. "Dude. Honestly. It is so very, very lame. And I always get paired with these, like, monosyllabic dorks who're afraid to look at me, much less, you know, emote or whatever."

I made a mental note to look up emote. "Um, ok, but at least you're not weaving potholders in the style of the Pueblo Indians"—I broke out the air quotes—"'in honor of the First Thanksgiving.'"

He stared at me, macaroni temporarily forgotten. "There are so many things wrong with that sentence."

I jammed my elbows on the table too hard and sent the ketchup flying. "I know, I know. I tried to explain that to Mrs. Blaine, but—"

Dean chuckled, his favorite sound of disgust. "Lemme guess. She didn't take too kindly to your sass."

"She sent me to the library. To, uh,"—I reached for her teacherly screech—"'educate yourself through research, young man, to avoid outbursts of such shocking ignorance in the future.'"

Dean laughed, for real this time, and brought his chair down with a bang. "_Outbursts of shocking ignorance_, huh? Man."

I shrugged, trying to be cool about it. Trying not to remember how she'd made my face burn, how hard it had been not to just bolt out of the room and down the fucking hall and never, ever come back to her tight face, to the eyes of all the kids I didn't know, didn't want to.

But what I said was:

"Yeah. It was ok. I just read until it was time to go home."

He reached over me and grabbed a fistful of onion rings. Gave me this sideways glance that made my face hot, but in a good way, this time. "Sammy. You hellion."

"Yeah, well," I said, smacking his elbow out of my plate. "But, see, your drama thing? So much cooler than that."

He crossed his eyes, which always made me laugh. "Whatever. No big deal. Not like I'll have suffer through it forever, right? We'll be outta here before long."

But we weren't.

It was one of those snowball hunts, Dean called them. When Dad would kill one big bad, working through it with another hunter, who then caught wind of something a town over, to be quickly followed by something else in the next state, and before you know it, a month was slicked away like blood off a blade and Dad was a thousand miles away from where he'd left us. One month. Then two. Then more.

Long enough, apparently, for Dean's crush to build slow burn, to work its way out of physical attraction and crash land in puppy love, though even then I knew he'd punch me if he heard me say that.

At first he just brought her name up a lot, usually in the middle of something else.

"Yeah," he said, conversational, his hip jammed in the doorframe. "I gotta work on my lines later. Shannon said it'll be easier for us to practice if we don't have scripts in our hands."

I looked up from where the fitted sheet was trying to strangle me. "Practice?"

He shook his head, impatient. "Yeah. Our scene thing. For drama."

"Oh. I thought you hated that."

He pushed off the wall and grabbed the other end of the sheet, helped me wrestle it around the mattress. "Eh," he said with a shrug. "It sucks. But Shannon's ok." His voice lit up. "She's really into the drama thing, dude. Totally knows what she's doing, unlike those other weirdos."

I grabbed the clean pillowcases off his bed and chucked one at his head. He caught it with one hand, his face all soft and swimmy.

"Yeah," he said. "Shannon. She's cool."

Honestly, for all his fake nonchalance, it was hard to not be jealous of Shannon. Dean was the one steady thing in my life, with Dad vanishing off into the ether all the time, never saying when he'd be back or even where he was going. But Dean? He'd never left, all the big brother he was supposed to be and a little more on top of it—a mix of friend, provider, protector—this sort of solid weight at the end of the day, always waiting for me out beyond the buses or sometimes lurking right around the front door when it was cold.

But one day, he wasn't. Wasn't stamping his feet by the flagpole and cursing at me good-natured to hurry the fuck up. Wasn't leaning against the front windows like a crocodile, peering in to watch all the middle school ducklings swim by.

I walked home alone once that week, twice the next, and by the end of February I did it all the time. Wouldn't see him until dinner, or even after, when he'd burst in whistling and breathless with this big, stupid grin.

It was like taking a sweater off too early in spring; made me feel vaguely cold and unnerved, being alone like that. A little exposed and open, even in our cramped, narrow house where I could see all the exits in one sweep and lay my hand on a weapon in one step. I felt—I was—alone, like even more than normal.

At least, I was until Dean got home and filled my ears with Shannon.

And yeah, okay: I was jealous.

"She's teaching me to move," he said over a microwaved bowl of soup one night, late, while I was yawning my way through the last of my history notes.

I didn't react fast enough, I guess, was too engrossed in the War of 1812, because he rattled his spoon loud in the clam chowder and leaned over.

"Sam. You hear me? She's teaching me, man, how to move."

I heard him, had the first time, but now something got through, pushed past Andrew Jackson and Dolly Madison and shot hot and fierce right through me, made my ears burn, and I had this weird porny flash of strobe lights and some girl's hands on Dean's back and—

"_What_?" I spluttered.

Dean laughed and reached over, shoved my cheek with his palm. "Please. Get your mind out of the gutter, kid." He shoved away from the table and dunked his bowl in the sink with the rest of the dishes. "Shannon, she's like, I dunno, a drama prodigy or something."

He hit the tap and kept yapping, raised his voice over the water. "She goes to some summer super-camp for drama and she's good, Sam. I mean, she's teaching me stuff, ok, and you know how much I am so not into that crap. All that acting, you know." He spun around, being 'dramatic,' I guess, flinging water everywhere, all over my notes. I spluttered and gave him a death glare, but he didn't notice. Kept running off at the mouth.

"Like today, she told me that people get stuck in the vertical when they first get on stage." He twisted around, elbows deep in suds, and he must have seen my face, because he said: "I know, right? I'd never have thought of that, man."

"She said you have to remember to move _outwards_, too," he declared, spreading his arms out. He did this dumb little twirl, Palmolive dripping from his fingers and his face glowing, like she'd given him the key to some great revelation—but it all sounded kind of silly to me. Like when Dad was harping about _staying grounded_ and _use your center of mass_ when he made us spar.

But I didn't say that. Dean looked so happy, lit up and smile-y, that I just rolled my eyes a little and let him ramble.

When he was down to the silverware, he said, too casual:

"Shannon, she thinks I should try out for the spring play. Some Shakespeare thing, I guess. I dunno."

I opened my mouth to mock—because come on, Dean? On stage? In _makeup_?—but something about his voice, the way his whole body had stopped, was just staring off into space, knives in his hands forgotten, that caught the jibe in my throat and made me swallow it hard.

"Um," I said finally. "That's—that'd be cool. You'd be good."

Because, yeah. He would. I guess I'd never thought about it before—Dean and actor in the same sentence, Dean like one of those guys on TV—but hey, it's what he did everyday, practically. What we did. Pretending to be normal, just like everybody else, and all that practice had to count for something.

Something in his face cracked and he grinned over his shoulder, back to being Dean again. "Of course I would. I'd rock the hell out of some tights." He pointed a soapy hand at me, mock stern. "Dude. It's so far past your bedtime I can see your first period class. Get to getting."

I could hear him, as I grumped into my pajamas, singing soft to himself as the water went down the drain.

One night he came home way late, somewhere out past Conan O'Brien. I was on the couch half-asleep, the remote clutched tight in my fist, when the door blew open and Dean breezed in and I knew something was different, something good, just from the sound of his voice.

"Sammy! Hey," he fake whispered. "You awake?"

He hit the overhead light, just to be sure. Jerk.

"Gah!" I shrieked, shoving my head under my arm. "Awake! I'm awake! Jeez! Dean!"

He laughed. I heard him clump across the room and the couch went voom as he sank down beside me. Smacked my knees until I threw them off the side and sat up, squinting.

"So," he said, smiling so hard he could barely get the word out. "Um. Can I tell you something?"

"Duh," I huffed, exasperated. "Like I even have a choice."

He scritched his fingers through my hair, which I hated, but it made me feel happy, too, that press of his hand to my head. Like he was trying to give me some of what he was feeling, letting it bleed over into me.

"Yeah, well. Listen up, squirt." He paused. For dramatic effect, I guess. "Shannon? She is totally in love with me."

I peered up at his face, still a little stupid with the light. "Uh. Ok. Is that good?"

He gave me this look, half-rolled eyes, half-smirk. "Is it—? Yes, ok? It's good. It's _really_ fucking good." He leaned back and took me with him, thanks to the lumpy couch. "She is really, really cool."

"Did you kiss her?" I asked, curious, thinking suddenly, for some unknown reason, about fairytales where people only knew love was real when the hero kissed the girl.

Dean snorted. "Hey look, Pervy McPerv, my life ain't porn for your enjoyment. Whatever happened, that's between me and her, ok?" He ruffled his feathers a little, preening. "And anyway, she's the one who kissed me."

I frowned. "Is that how you know someone loves you? 'Cause they kiss you?"

He hummed and tugged me a little tighter. "No, dude. It's when somebody tells you; when they say it, you know. _I love you_. That's how I know. She said."

He said it like it should have made sense to me, like it was logical or something, but I didn't get it. Not really. So I turned my face and knocked my eyes into the dark press of his shoulder.

"You like her?" I asked.

At first, I thought he didn't hear me, that the words had gotten lost in the leather, because he didn't say anything. Just patted my back like he did when I was little, when I couldn't sleep. He was quiet for a long time. So long that I started to drift there, tucked up safe under his arm.

"No, kiddo," he said finally, fingers keeping score on my shoulder. "No. Don't like her. I love her." I could hear the grin there, when he said it. And again. "I _love_ her, Sammy. Huh. How about that?"

"'S awesome," I mumbled, _love_ and _like_ floating behind my eyes.

He chuckled low in his belly, the sound shoving into my side. "Pretty fucking awesome, yeah. I know."

I woke up in my own bed, so he must have picked me up, tucked me in, but all I could remember was that note in his voice, the way it rang funny and beautiful when he said that word. _Love_.

Dean had like, liked, plenty of girls before. Tossed their names at me like pom poms in the backseat, or under the covers, or in front of the TV. Jenny Debra Colleen Simone Ashley and Georgia, just to name a few. But he'd never _loved_ one, at least not that he'd told me, and I knew he would have. He never could keep crap like that to himself.

In those days, he wore his heart way out on his sleeve. And Shannon stuck there like nobody else had.

"What do you think?" he asked, a week later.

I was fighting with the topic sentence in my paper on _The Outsiders_. Had been for what felt like forever so I wasn't interested in whatever he wanted attention on right that second.  
"Uh huh," I muttered, bitterly shoving eraser shards across the tabletop.

"Dude, you have to actually look," he said, rattling something by my ear.

I sighed and turned my head, melodramatic. "Geez, ok, what?"

He sat down beside me, so close I could smell Irish Spring on him and feel the heat of the sun rolling up off his body.

"I got it for Shannon," he said, laying a small, open box on the table in front of me. "Think she'll like it?" His eyes were all burning hope, his tongue caught on the edge of his incisor, the way it always did—still does—when he's nervous.

The box held a tiny, silver-y looking necklace: a charm of a sailboat dangling from a delicate chain. The kind that costs $12.95 at the mall and turns green after six weeks. Even I knew that, but Dean actually _blushed_, looking down at it, like it was some rare precious thing.

"She's always talking about this house her grandfather used to own in Nantucket, before he died," he said, his voice this odd mixture of heedy and needy, edged with desperation so thick I could feel the butterflies in his stomach. "She, ah, goes on and on about watching the boats on the water from the back porch, you know. When she was little. So I thought—it reminded me of her, I guess."

I swallowed the sudden awful taste in my mouth, wondered why my ears felt like volcanoes. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, Dean. She'll love it."

He looked at me, then back at the boat. "Think so?" he said, uncertain, and that was—weird. Dean was always so sure, to the point of pig-headedness, always steady and solid and it was strange to think that some girl could come along and tie him up in knots like that.

In retrospect, I guess I found it scary, that crack in his foundation. It meant Dean was vulnerable, and that was something that couldn't be salted and burned or tracked and cut down. I hated the idea that something so everyday, so _normal_, had the potential to hurt him in ways that monsters never could.

He closed the lid, held the box between his palms for a moment and ducked his head. "Wanted to get her sapphires," he told the floorboards. "Something to match her eyes. Cause, man, her eyes—" He stopped. Sat in silence a moment, then shook his head like he was chasing away the flies. "You need help?" he asked, jutting his chin at my paper.

"Pfft! No!" I said, just like he knew I would, and he shuffled off towards the bedroom. Singing again.

Two things happened that March: the spring formal and the last of the winter snow finally melting away.

One caused Dean to drag me out to Goodwill with a pocket full of cash he'd saved from shoveling the neighbors' driveways all winter. I bitched the whole way there, but he just ignored me, dragged me along behind like the little brother I hated being, sometimes. Like right then, when he could overpower me with sheer will and arm strength. But the worst part was how freaking cheerful he was about the whole thing.

"Oh, come on, Sammy!" he chirped. "This'll be awesome. I promise."

"Ugh awesome ugh," I gulped out, wiggling under his grip like crazy, all to no avail. No, he mushed me through the doors and pulled me through the industrial strength detergent-scented rows of clothes till he found was he was looking for, which was—

Dress shirts?

"Her cousin is seventeen and he's got a convertible Cavalier," Dean said with a bit of a sneer. He yanked a black oxford off the rack, saw it was way too big and shoved it back. "I mean, it's nothing fancy. It's not the Impala."

I rolled my eyes.

"But Shannon likes convertibles. She says they make her feel closer to nature."

I looked up from inspecting the bizarre embroidery of seahorse? a skull? on some poor shirt's sleeve to see if Dean made a face at the idea that a _convertible Cavalier_ could make someone feel closer to _nature_.

He didn't.

"But, you know," he shrugged. "Whatever. Her cousin is gonna drive us."

I pulled out a bright purple button-down, convinced it belonged on the costume rack. "Drive you where?"

"To the spring formal," Dean said. His voice didn't have nearly the shame I would've expected, saying a sentence like that out loud.

"What do you think of this one?" he asked, while my brain was still trying to get past the idea of Dean doing anything that could be called "formal." It was even crazier than the acting thing.

He held up a forest-green shirt that had neither embroidery of sea life nor any unidentifiable stains.

I nodded. "Matches your eyes," I said, and instantly felt ridiculous.

But Dean didn't notice. Just gave me a grin and bobbed off towards the old guy section.

He paired the shirt with a skinny black tie, like the one Kevin Bacon wore in _Footloose_—"One note outta your mouth, Sammy, and I'm leaving you here!"— and a pair of dark-wash jeans, because he may have loved Shannon, sure, but not enough to put on slacks.

It was three days later, Wednesday, that spring finally managed to win the war with the sturdy little patches of snow that had been hiding out in the shady spots along the edges of our house. Places the sun just hadn't gotten her fingers into yet, but, no, it was gone overnight. Spring set up camp in western Maryland and wouldn't you know it, that meant—

The end of Dad's snowball hunt.

I loped home from school—right elbow still feeling awkwardly empty without Dean clocking into it every other step—to find Dad, two days' stubble on his face, cleaning guns at the kitchen table like it was nothing. Like the place was all his. Like he hadn't just reappeared out of nowhere after almost three months away.

When he lifted his head, saw me wavering in the doorway, I could have sworn he looked right through me. That he was disappointed with me, all the way down to the core.

But what he said was:

"Sam. Your brother. Where is he?" Black gumdrop eyes on my face, just waiting for me to make a mistake.

"Um!" I managed. "He's—he's at school. Probably. Had to stay late, or uh. Something."

And if Dean onstage was a weird idea, me as an actor? Even worse.

Dad squinted over at me, his fingers soaked in oil and burnt-up salt. "Dean. At school. Any second later than he has to be," he said, flat, like I'd said Dean was a lobster or something. "You wanna try that one again, boy?"

I flinched and tried to hide it in a shift, knocking my backpack from one shoulder to the other. "I, uh. No, he's—"

He shoved back his chair, this old wooden thing that creaked like it was dying. "Sam. Don't lie to me."

"Not!" I wheezed, and in my head I saw this swirl of Dean these last weeks, happy and whistling and kind of annoying, frankly, and even weirder than usual, but happy—even I could see that—and I _knew_, I just knew sick certain what Dad was gonna make of all that, and oh, jeez, the acting, I'd never thought about what Dad would do when he—

His hand found my shoulder, _bang_. I raised my head like a weight on a chain, heavy and steady, until he was blinking down at me, bemused. Not angry. Not yet. But it was there, hanging out in the line of his jaw and just waiting for me to unleash it.

Heat rushed up to my forehead and my brain went egg salad.

"He's, um, sir. He's at the—what I mean is, Dean's—"

"Dean's what?"

Dad's eyes went right to the sound, to the door, and I heard Dean's breath snap to attention.

"Sir," he said, stiff, a totally different voice than before. "Good to see you."

Dad let me go, moved past my shoulder fast. I curled myself around the arm of the couch. Caught Dean's eye for a second, but—

"Son," Dad said. A test. Always a test, that word. "Where you been?"

I didn't have time to warn him. But Dean was always a step ahead. Always thinking vertical.

"Tutoring," he said with a sigh. "Some required crap." He raised his eyebrows at the ceiling and smirked. "This old crone thinks I don't know enough algebra, you know?"

And hell, I _knew_ he was lying, but the crap just rolled like honey off his tongue, sincerity swimming out with every shrug.

Dad chuckled, cuffed Dean easy on the ear. "Algebra, huh? You never were any good at math."

Dean laughed, too, dismissive. "Yeah. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was wastin' her time. And mine."

And just like that, it was over. Danger in the rearview and I was the one heaving like I'd just run a marathon.

Fuck, Dean was a good actor. Is.

"Well," Dad said. "You can forget about her. We're rolling out."

I saw Dean freeze, all that bravado gone in a flash.

"We are?" I said for him. "When?"

Dad flipped around, irritated. I think he'd forgotten I was even there.

"First thing. No later than 0500. So you boys better hit the sack early tonight, am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," I mumbled.

Conspicuous silence. I couldn't bring myself to look at Dean's face.

Dad's brow clenched. "Is that clear?" he said again, his voice dropping through the floor.

"I, uh—" Dean choked. "Can we—? Is there any way we could stay a few more days, sir?"

Dad had this uncanny ability to pack days of that calm before the storm feeling into the line of his shoulders, and damn if you didn't know what was coming the second you saw them draw tight.

But Dean, always ready to run headlong into danger, even into things he knew he couldn't win, acted like he couldn't feel that shift in the room. Pretended he hadn't spent fifteen years under the same roof as Dad and didn't know that the twitch in his jaw was the harbinger of trouble.

"Stay a few more days?" Dad repeated slowly, like he hadn't quite caught it.

"Yes, sir," Dean said.

Dad took a step in on him.

My stomach dropped out and my mouth went desert then, for Dean, 'cause there was no way this was gonna end well.

"Why?" Dad asked, now all might and muscle. Sometimes, I forgot how big he was—or I figured it was my imagination that made him seem that way, my brain filling in all those missing pieces from when he wasn't around. But moments like this, there was no question: he was huge, towering over Dean like a challenged titan.

That was when Dean's bravado shook a little. When his silver armor started to lose luster and look a little more like tinfoil. "I made a promise," he said. "To a friend."

Even though his voice didn't crack, I could still hear it, where it wanted to waver. But John Winchester didn't raise sissyboys—he raised men who speak their minds. Unless their minds tried to speak up against him.

"What kind of promise?" Dad asked, careful. Much too careful.

Dean swallowed, and then I could see the shadow of that big ugly beast of puppy love looming larger than life over him.

"_IpromisedI'dtakehertothedance_," Dean said, all at once. One big mouthful like that and he turned pink and pale and clammed right the hell up and stopped being so brave, so sturdy, so Dean. Stared down at the floor. Not even at Dad's shoes, but at the cracked floor boards by the front door.

Dad blinked. Stepped back. Lost tension like water. "What?" he said, because all the things he expected to come out of Dean's mouth, it was clear that one hadn't made the list.

Dean sneaked a peek up. Just one. Cleared his throat and tried for that swagger, that good ol' lie he could tell like no one's business, but he couldn't get it that night.

"I promised her I'd take her to the spring formal," he said. Clear this time, slower, but no less rickety than the first time through.

And Dad?

Dad laughed.

A big, belly-roll kind of a sound. Tilted his head back and set a hand on his stomach and _laughed_. Like something wild being unleashed.

Dean shot me a glance. To see if I was as taken by surprise as him, and seemed to take some messed-up form of solace in the fact that we were both taken aback. The knot in my stomach got tighter.

Dad finally caught his breath. Wiped at his eyes with one palm. "You promised a girl you'd take her to a dance?"

I watched this red climb slow and steady up Dean's throat and head straight on towards his ears.

"Well," he started, tried to smile, that slick smile I'd seen him use on a 100 authority figures at all hours of the day and night. The one that says he knows what he's doing, sir, so trust him.

But Dad knew it, knew Dean, knew all his tricks 'cause Dad wrote the damn book on them all, and as soon as Dean looked him in the eye with that forming smile, it dropped right off and, well.

All that acting stuff only went so far.

Dad waited. Like he waited for monsters to crawl into a baited trap. He waited. Patient and smooth.

"You've been gone for almost three months!" Dean tried.

I gripped the seam of the couch cushion so hard that threads snagged my nails.

"And I got to know this girl," Dean continued. "And she's—" there it was, the little spark of happy that was going to get him killed— "she's really something and I promised I'd take her to the spring formal. On Saturday."

I held my breath. Dean held his ground.

To my surprise, Dad didn't yell. Didn't scream. Didn't say no. Not out right.

Instead he turned to me. "Sam, go pack your gear," he said.

I froze for a second—halfway between protesting and just too tangled up to move for a second. Just long enough for him to raise an eyebrow and yeah, I got it.

"Yes, sir," I coughed out and hurried out with only a quick glance at Dean. I bolted to our room two doors down the hall. Closed the door, careful, and leaned against it, listening.

Because no way in hell was I missing this conversation.

The thing was—Dad wasn't mad.

After all that, I expected him to be. Expected him to yell or, or something. Something equally terrifying in the way that Dad could be, that nothing else was.

Instead, I heard him make Dean sit down and tell him it was time for a talk, and, well, that sounded about as uncomfortable as the year prior when Dad had given me a talk.

But it wasn't like that, either.

It was something even more awful.

"We don't get a lot of time with people," Dad said. Like we, duh, even I'd figured that one out by that point.

But Dean didn't say anything snarky, like I would've. Good little soldier boy. Just sat back and listened.

"So when you find someone you connect with, you don't get to keep them. They're not _family_, Dean," Dad said, in this end-all sort of voice. The same one that'd said my name more times than I could recall—now it said Dean's name like that.

"You don't get to keep them," Dad repeated, slower this time, so Dean'd have no choice but to follow, to digest that statement. "You have to get what you want from them and get out. People are tools. We're going for bigger fish, Dean. We have greater purpose. This?" I could almost see him flipping his hands around, taking in the house, the street, the town and everyone in it. "Whatever _this_ is, son, is nonsense. You'll see in time. You have a purpose. You're a hunter. You get close to people and those people get themselves dead. So don't make that mistake. Because you're better than that."

There was this long pause, so long I thought it was over, but then Dad came back, steady and a little too strong:

"Son. Tell me the truth. You fuck this girl?"

My breath went out in a punch, heard Dean's do the same as he wheezed: "No! No, sir, I—" and it was like an oil spill in my ears, like Dad had made Shannon, this good thing between she and Dean into something dirty and sad. My stomach twisted and I pushed my forehead into the door, willing Dean to get up, get _out_ of there and away from Dad, but—

Dad sighed, this long drawn out thing like he had the weight of the world on his chest. "That's exactly what I mean," he said. "You were operating on a false assumption: that you'd be here to see it through, with this girl." I heard the chair creak, and I could just see Dad pitching forward, his face right there in Dean's. "I appreciate your sense of romance, Dean. Really. But despite what the rest of the world tells you, you ain't got time for that shit. None of us do, as hunters."

For a second, he was quiet and all I could hear was Dean breathing ragged and fast. In my head, I could see the look on his face: his lips twisted like they always did when he was trying not to cry or scream or punch me in the face.

"So," Dad said, certain, like everything was all settled. "Next time you meet a girl like this. A girl you think you like. One who likes you back. Take what you need from her, son, as soon as you fucking can. Because I guran-damn-tee you that if you don't, you may not live long enough to regret it. You know what I mean?"

I barely caught Dean's muffled "Yes, sir," through the door. I knew that voice, too. It was the one that said Dean was hurt, the one he used when his skin was ripped up and bloody but he wanted to show Dad that the pain didn't matter, that he could fight through it like Dad always told him he should, and like always, I was the one who cried.

I stumbled around in our little room, throwing dirty clothes and books at my bag, but my face was all wet and red. Made it hard to see. I could still hear the hum of them talking outside but I didn't want to, didn't want to hear Dean's little huffs of assent and the rumble of whatever else Dad was spewing, so I gave up on packing, and threw myself under the covers. Shoved my head up under the pillows and fell into that uneasy kind of sleep that only sobbing will bring, my cheeks hot against the sheets and my little kid heart stuttering in my chest.

I woke up to a knee in the back.

I don't think that's what Dean was going for.

"Fuck, Sam," he whispered. "Sorry. Sorry, dude."

I blinked, bleary-eyed up into the darkness. "Dean?"

"Shh," he muttered, lifting the edge of the old army-issue blanket and sinking into the bed beside me. Which was kinda dumb because his bed was right there and in better shape than mine, with its lumpy twin mattress that sagged beneath us as he rolled, curled one of his hot hands over my shoulder and hauled me up against him.

I just went, ragdoll limp from crying, and settled against him, let the overwhelming smell of summer-in-waiting that always seemed to radiate off him, even in the dead of winter, seep into my nose where it was pressed against his collar.

"s'okay, Sammy," Dean said, rubbing his palm across my back. Like I was the one Dad had just torn apart at the kitchen table.

I sighed, my breath still ragged with tears, and that made him clutch me harder, press his fingers into my spine and say it again.

"s'okay, Sammy. Everything's gonna be fine."

He kept saying it, over and over, until I fell asleep.

XxX

A week later and we were in another no place, nowhere with miles at our back and Dad already gone off somewhere to kill who knew what. Me with a new schedule at a new school, Dean with a newly soured attitude, already finding the bad side of teachers and principals and a whole list of jocks itching to prove their masculinity. It was a miracle, frankly, that the cops weren't on that list, too.

He came home late one Friday, way after school. Slammed the door, rubbing at his face and whining about his "beard." He was always complaining about his facial hair itching, but I think he just wanted to remind me that he _had_ facial hair, finally.

"Sorry, Sammy," he breezed, leaning back against the door. "I was going to walk you home, but I got detention." He gave me this look that I couldn't pin down. Something significant, though: frustration? Anxiety? _Pride_? With Dean, who knew?

"It's okay," I said, squelching the truth inside me that I had hoped, I had looked for him by the flagpole, thinking maybe, _maybe_.

Dean vanished off into our room, and I knew better than to bug him, what with the black cloud he was dragging around. It wasn't worth getting rained on.

But he went out ten minutes later and didn't come back till sometime near dawn.

And for all the shit we'd been through, he and I, all the crappy towns we'd hunkered down in—he'd never done that before. Left me alone all night, like that.

He smelled like cigarettes and beer when he blew in, and it was a good thing Dad was off killing whatever needed to be dead this time because otherwise, Dean would have been next.

But there was something else to it, too, when Dean stumbled into our room. He sat heavy on the edge of his bed like his bones were weary, like his body weighed more than he could stand. He sat there a long time, staring at nothing in the dark.

I pretended to sleep. Dean must have known I was awake, though. He had to. But he didn't say a word.

After a while, he pitched up and stumbled away. I heard the water run, his toothbrush hit the sink, his belt buckle clatter to the floor. His bed heave as he rolled inside.

I laid awake a long time, my mouth full of smoke and my head filled with the sound of his breathing. It was hard and low, and he sounded just like Dad.

The next day—after getting up at the crack of two in the afternoon—he took me out to the edge of town. Where the houses let out into a thin forest that followed a shallow creek up into the hills a little. The whole way was littered with broken glass and trash, up to a clearing—clearly the local teen hangout, if the Natty Light cans were any indication—where the water got a little deeper and pooled clean and clear.

He stood there, a long moment. "Some of the guys on the lacrosse team showed me this last night," he said, squinting into the sunlight. "I dunno, it was kind of cool."

Something unsettled inside of me, snapped its moorings and drifted away from the dock, because all that self-assurance, all that ease, that had formed Dean back in those days, it wasn't there anymore. Flat out gone.

It wasn't in his eyes or spread smooth over his shoulders or set into the line of his jaw. All that suave and cool and smoothness that made Dean, well, _Dean_, my big brother, seemed tarnished and swallowed whole. Crushed.

"But, you know what Dad would say. Don't get too attached."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out that cheap necklace with the sailboat on it, sparkling in the afternoon light.

"It was stupid, wasn't it?" he asked, finally looking at me. But it wasn't a question. Not really. More like a statement of fact. His face twisted, went heavy and sad, and his eyes wouldn't let me go. "No use in bein' sentimental, Sammy."

Then he reared back and hurled that cheap trinket as far as he could, as hard as he could, like the thing was burning his hand. We heard it splash somewhere. Sink somewhere. Get lost somewhere.

I felt my eyes sting, opened my mouth to ask _why_, why he hadn't even tried to call her, at least, try and explain that we had to leave, that it wasn't his choice, but Dean was faster.

"Come on," he said, gruff, but he drew his arm around me like he used to when I was little, and we stumbled back down the path, over the trash, little vestiges of other people's lives, and home.

He made me spaghetti and garlic bread and didn't say Shannon's name again for a long, long time.


	2. Chapter 2

When Sammy was 20, he fell in love for the first time.

Sure, there had been girls before. Prom dates and study dates and blundering first dates to that shitty go-kart place in Salt Lake City. But none of it had been, you know, love.

I'm pretty sure with how gangly and bookish and awkward as all hell he was, he probably still had his v-card when he got on that bus to California.

Thing was, he'd had his chances on that end, sure. I'd seen plenty of girls, the ones he'd meet at coffee shops or in their living rooms—never brought a girl home to meet me, not once—giving him eyelashes all serious. One word, the right one, and he woulda been in.

But I'm pretty damn sure he didn't. I'd have known. I'd have seen something different. Hell, the kid would have told me, right?

Whatever.

All I know is, when Sam was 20, when he was away, he fell in love for the first time and I wasn't there for him to tell.

He fell in love with a girl—all right, a _young woman_—who Mom would've liked and I think, if he'd had his shit together, Dad would've been ok with her, too.

And, damn, she was a looker. Didn't think Sam had it in him.

He never told me about how they met.

And I never asked. Guess I should've, but I couldn't.

It was easier to ignore it. Ignore those four years gone and look past the way Sam's face got all swimmy when he talked about Jess, like she filled him with this crazy, unexpected happy that he'd never had before in his life.

A happiness I sure as hell had never been able to give him, I know. But, hey. Not for my lack of trying.

Something about that smile, his, when he talked about her made me feel like someone had dropped a frozen rock in my stomach, knowing that being so _normal_, so freaking _pink houses_, could make him so fuckin' ecstatic.

I saw him once, while he was with her.

I mean, once before I pulled him away from school and his one good shot at normal and back into the big black hole of hunting.

Dad and I were in California to salt and burn some undead motherfucker: ghost or ghoul or whatever, I don't remember now. And me, I just wanted to stick my head in. Make sure the kid was doing okay.

Good thing was, Dad was depressed.

Oh, he sure as fuck knew how close we were to Sam. That his son was only a two hour haul away from our shit-tastic motel set-up.

But did he say a word about it? Nah. Not so much as "boo."

He did, however, buy a second six-pack and nail his ass to the couch.

I don't think he even noticed me leave.

I drove upstate in the dark and kind hovered around the campus until it got light, waiting. Sucking down terrible coffee and pretending I wasn't nervous as hell.

Yeah, yeah. I was a freaking wreck.

It was after nine in the AM before I finally spotted him. He was studying—which, of course he was— with a group of other kids outside some pretty brick building. They were sitting in the grass under a damn gorgeous tree, books spread all around 'em like some freaking photoshoot of genius and even in all that, he stood out.

Sure, his hair was stupider than I remembered and he had a freaking tan but he had this grin on his face that I sure as hell hadn't forgotten.

SamSamSam, my heart said, all helpful like.

Yeah, no shit, I shot back.

His laugh kicked me out of my head, and I watched him yuck it up with all those other geekboys and, fuck. That was enough.

Enough creeping for one day. Enough hanging in the shadows watching my brother look like a stranger, some version of somebody I knew once, maybe, but it was clear that this was his world. Not mine.

I felt like a trespasser right then, when all I'd ever been was protector.

So I exited stage right.

I went to grab a bite at some local joint just off campus. I slammed my salt and grease and considered the blondes in the next booth. Started thinking maybe I'd try my hand at picking up a Stanford girl, a smart chick. How I'd do it. What I'd say. How hot it'd make me when she said something really fucking bon mot, but bam!

One big paw landed smack dab on my shoulder and that voice—that snot-nosed, _little brother_ voice that was neither snot-nosed nor real fucking _little_ anymore—shot into my ear.

"Dean?" Sam said, both surprised and not at all.

I didn't mean for him to know I was, ok, spying on his giant ass, but, fuck, he was raised to be a hunter and apparently two years of college did nothing to tone down the Spidey sense the life stuck us both with. I guess I wasn't as stealthy as I thought. Or he was just a little bit better.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little pride, at that.

I tipped my head back until I could see him glower.

"Heya, Sammy," I tried with this bigass fake smile.

"It's Sam," he spat and damn if he didn't manhandle me, drag me off into the corner and get me up close and personal with the pay phone.

"What are you doing?" he barked, letting go so quick I fell back on my feet. Hit my head on the fucking receiver.

"Uh. Hunting," I said. Which was the truth. Even if the hunt was technically over.

Even if I was unofficially hunting him.

I figured he was probably not gonna punch me in a place where people seemed to know him and shit, but I could see the temptation kicking around in his eyes.

"Hunting? _Here_?" Sam said, incredulous, like nothing evil ever set up camp in the Great State of California.

I squared my shoulders and shoved him a little. Just to regain some ground. "Yeah, dude, here. Bad shit don't stop, you know, just because you ain't playing along."

That one stung, and I hadn't meant to say it, fuck, but. There it was.

His eyes narrowed. "Why are you spying on me?"

"I'm not!" I barked, or tried to, but it might've been more like a squawk.

Of course, Sasquatch was a step ahead of me already. "Dude," he hissed, going right for the bitch. "I can hear the Impala four blocks off."

Which, point.

I held up my hands. "Okay, fine. You got me, Mr. Bond. Guilty. I was just—I wanted to see how you were."

Didn't really mean to admit that, either, but something about having the kid right there in my fucking face threw me off my game a little. Apparently.

His face got shifty. "Wait. Is Dad here?" he asked, voice this sudden mixture of fury and fear.

"No, he, uh"—is probably still in a booze-induced coma—"went on this morning," I lied. "Something Bobby's got a scent on in Kentucky. You know how it is."

He nodded, but it didn't go away, all that anger, automatic, at Dad. Just sat right up there on the surface of Sam's face.

Stayed there.

Somehow I managed to talk him into letting me finish my fucking breakfast, into ordering one of his own, and by then it was after noon and that made it totally ok for us to head to the bar, to some townie joint next door with Coors on special and a pretty girl behind the tap, and it didn't take too much to get him to sit down across from me and order a drink. Or two. Or three.

The bar got louder and my head got blurry and I was finally able to ask him, "So, how's life been treatin' you?"

That's when it came—this beautiful, happy, like, smile that I wasn't actually sure I'd ever seen before. "It's—I'm good, man. I mean, I know you'd hate it here, but it's going well."

Something low inside of me tightened, made it hard to breathe, but I squelched it. Swallowed hard and kept it all down.

Sam had left, over out and done, and I had no right to make him feel shitty about it anymore. Period. Especially now, when I could see how happy it made him, being here. He was almost stupid with it, and fuck, did that piss me off. I hated that he could just sit pretty out here in the fucking sunshine and be _happy_ when he knew that evil shit was out there going bump in other people's nights and that he wasn't doing a damn thing to stop it.

When he knew that I was still out there, fighting the good fight or whatever, without him.

But I squelched that. Swallowed hard and kept it all down.

And instead, I asked him: "You got a girl?"

I tried to make it casual. Leaned back, stretched my leg out under the table. Pretended I didn't give a shit about the answer. Mostly because I wasn't sure _why_ I cared, exactly.

He went all Bambi-bashful on me. Stared down at his hands, at where he was picking at the label of his beer. "Yeah," he said finally, and I swear the top of his head was blushing.

I—

I wanted to hear more and I didn't, all at once. My tongue got tangled in my teeth and I just sat there. Hid the confusion behind my glass.

But Sam knew or understood or something, some crazy unspoken thing that we'd always had, that made him quick on the curve intuitive. He pressed forward, gave me what I wasn't brave enough to ask.

"I love her," he breathed. "Dean, I love her."

He always understood me, the little shit. Especially when I didn't know what to say.

"You, uh," I started, but he cut me off with another one of those fucking smiles.

"Yeah," he said. "Her name's Jess. And she's—man, I don't know, she's like—" He did this flippy thing with his hand that I was sure was gonna leave rainbows in its wake. "Smart, she's so incredibly smart. And funny." He laughed. "Got a way better sense of humor than you, jerk."

It shook me, hearing her and me all tangled up in his voice. It sounded weird and wrong and underscored to me, like, hello, creeper. This ain't your territory anymore.

I just rolled my eyes, though, and gave him the finger. "Whatever. I'm hilarious, bitch."

He snorted. "That's it exactly. She has no idea how funny she is, dude. Whereas you, you overcompensate."

That earned him a smack on the head, just on principle. He came right back at me, reflex faster than aim, and knocked the hell out of his beer.

He was on the floor in a flash, dabbing at that shit with his napkin, and it was just like old fucking times: him being an ass, me laughing mine off at his expense, and for a second, it was like no time had passed.

Which was, of course, the moment he looked at the clock.

"Oh shit!" he hissed. "Dean. I've got a lab in 20 minutes. I'm sorry. I have to go."

He hopped up, flailing, and there was the geeky kid I knew. Practically running his legs out from under him in his effort to go and get smart.

Made me feel good, seeing that. Like, all he had to worry about was learning. Nobody was gonna gank him in one of those pretty brick buildings. No ghost was gonna jump him from a test tube.

He was good, Sammy. He was safe.

"You're an idiot," I told him, throwing bills at our empties. "What kind of irresponsible jackass goes to class drunk?"

He banged ahead of me out the door and spun around on the sidewalk.

"'M not drunk!" he said, indignant. "And you're the one who's corrupting me, genius. Who the fuck drinks in the middle of the day?"

"I do," I said with a smile. "And so do you, when I'm buying."

He gave me this goofy grin and patted my shoulder. I got him by the elbow.

"C'mon. Let me give you a ride."

I give the kid credit: he knew me well enough not to say: "Stay."

'Cause I would have.

Even though that woulda thrown off the balance he'd found, the way he was tripping between the scales of our family's fucked-up crazy and the golf course lawns of Palo Alto.

Yeah, I'd have stayed. I've always been a selfish bastard.

I dropped him off on a side street and he reached for me. Gave me a hug.

"Be careful," he said in my ear. "Ok? You be careful."

I squeezed back and just nodded my head. Drove away without saying a word.

And then, fuck.

When Sam was 22, he lost her. Jess. His first love.

No. He didn't lose her. He had to watch her die.

Hell, I think he'd have gone out with her if I'd let him. If I'd just been a few minutes later.

That's the real reason, why I never asked about Jess, never wanted to know that much about her.

Because, to Sam, she was something worth dying over. And I couldn't wrap my mind around that, at the time. Couldn't imagine there was anything other than me or Dad that Sam would stick his neck so far out on the line for. Because, yeah, I'd loved Cassie and way way back, I'd loved Shannon, but, when push came to shove, I don't know if I'd have died for either one.

Like I would've for Sam. There's no question.

But see, he was better than me that way.

We just had different definitions of love.

And I sort of forgot that. For a long, long time.


	3. Chapter 3

After that, after Shannon, I guess it became a pattern with him.

Blowing into a town, finding the rough-around-the-edges group of people. The ones who probably weren't _bad_, not really, but were stuck in bad places. Hanging out with them, getting to know all the seedy ins and outs of dusty American towns.

But he didn't talk about it. Not to me, anyways. Whatever it was he was doing. Didn't bring his friends over. Didn't try another acting class.

Didn't talk about girls, any of them. Not like he had Shannon.

Even after I started becoming aware of the fact that there were girls. And a lot of them.

Sure, he talked about their parts, their physical attributes, or whatever, in the crudest possible terms.

When puberty started pushing me around a little, not long after, I started to see how he flirted with cashiers and desk clerks, with random pretty girls on the street. Hell, even my _algebra teacher_, when he bumped into her picking me up from class one day.

He started coming home late at night all the time, smudged with the scent of smoke and beer and the floral note of a lady's shampoo or perfume.

But there were no more cheap necklaces or formal dances or even the suggestion of anything so conventional as a date.

Just Dean learning how to make use of his charm and his looks. The same way he learned the weight of a new weapon in his hands.

It was just something else to add to his arsenal.

And that's what it was, to Dean, it seemed like: a tool. For release or pleasure or help with a case or whatever. Nothing that really created intimacy or cultivated love or anything like that. Things that Dean scoffed at, distanced himself from as loudly as he could.

Until Cassie, apparently.

But I wasn't around to see that, of course. I just caught the highlight reel.

What's funny, though, is that Cassie sort of proved Dad's point. About how keeping your heart under wraps was pretty much the only way to go for people like us. I mean, if somebody like her couldn't take it straight—somebody that smart and funny and willing to put up with Dean's crap, but only to a point—then, fuck. Who would? Who could? Maybe, I thought, as we left Mississippi well and good behind, we should just stop expecting the world to understand us, what we did, people like us, and accept the rules for what they were. The rules that Dad had laid down so long ago.

You don't get to keep them, people you love. So what point is there in trying?

But all that was in the abstract, for me. I understood it, sort of, sure, as a way of living that make sense to Dean, but I wasn't like that. I didn't treat women that way, as disposable fuck toys or something, especially after Jess. No, my heart was always in the game, with any girl that I liked, even if we were only in town for a while.

But not Dean. Years of not letting anyone in past the gates of the Winchester smirk, of leather gun charm and guile; hell, I think, he forgot how to work the damn lock. And when he finally got it jimmied, damn if Cassie didn't slam those gates on his fingers, make him rue the day he ever wanted them open.

But me? Come on. I was an open book. Wasn't that what Dean told me every five minutes, it seemed like? My heart was always in play.

Dean might have padlocked his, after Cassie, but mine had always been open.

So I thought, anyway.

It was late, a few weeks after we'd left Mississippi, in that part of the night that's so close to day it almost seemed like a waste to lay down. But we were anyway, stretched out akimbo on a crappy queen, only one decent pillow between us, and I let my curiosity get the best of me. The words snuck out before I could stop them.

"How did you know?"

The bed creaked as he twisted towards me. "Know what?"

"With, uh. With Cassie. How'd you know that you were, um, in love with her?"

A couple of semis went by outside before he answered.

"Eh," he said, wistful. "I woke up one day, you know, beside her. Looked over and realized I couldn't really see myself doing that again—waking up, I mean—unless she was gonna be the first thing I saw."

I waited for him to finish, to kick himself with some stupid aside, but he didn't.

"Oh," I said, finally. "Yeah."

He sighed and shifted again. Stretched out on his back, his bare knee knocking mine.

"So how did you know? With Jess?"

I bit my lip. "I didn't, for a long time. She said something first, and I kind of didn't believe her."

He chuckled. "Really."

"Yeah."

We'd never talked about Jess, not about her and me, I mean. Not really. What our lives were like together or whatever, and I wasn't sure what he wanted me to say. If he was seriously asking, or if he was just trying to level the playing field. Poke me back since I'd bugged him first, or something.

But I hadn't realized how much I missed hearing her name, missed thinking about her when she was alive, about her living, so I grabbed that chance and kept talking.

"Jess, she—it was on our second date, and she—she said it, you know, that she loved me, and I—"

He shook his head, and I could hear the grin in his voice. "You left her hanging, Sammy? Aw, come on. I taught you better than that."

I didn't tell him that she'd said it when she was right on the edge, when my tongue was on her clit and my chin smeared with her sweet wet. Didn't tell him how her hand went tight in my hair and her thighs shook against my ears when she came, that little hoarse _I love you_ still hovering over her lips.

My silence said enough, I guess, because he laughed and smacked my arm. "And on your second date, huh? You dog."

"We'd been friends for a long time before that!" I said, which was true, but it sounded like a dodge even to me. I didn't blame him when he laughed again.

"Oh, I bet you were," he leered. "Yeah. Friends my ass."

I let it lie. Turned over and tugged the pillow towards me. Buried my eyes in the cotton and let myself see her face for once without flinching. Sometimes it was easy to forget how happy we'd been, how happy she'd made me, how good it was when we were together, and now that I'd started remembering, I didn't want to stop. So I tried to block out where I was, who was with me, and just stared at her in my head, all the Jesses she'd been while I'd known her: my friend, my lover, the girl I was going to marry.

She put a smile on my face, every time, even when she was furious with me, and fuck did that piss her off.

For the first time in a long time, I let her do that again. Make me smile.

Dean let it go for a while, let me, but then he got impatient.

"So," he said. "She knew first, ok. So when did you?"

_When I saw her burning_, my head said, unbidden, and then the rest of me caught up, shouting _Oh fuck oh no that wasn't true I know that isn't—_

"Sam?"

Dean pitched up. I could feel him leaning over me, annoyed, but the flames in my head were still roaring and I had to keep my eyes closed, had to, or else I was sure they'd escape and we'd both go up in smoke.

"Dude. You _asleep_?"

I bit my lip again. Didn't answer.

"Fine," he huffed. "Don't tell me, bitch. Last time I get all touchy-feely with you."

I waited until he was asleep, caught dead in the snores he'd always deny. That's when I let myself cry. But all those damn tears couldn't put out the fire behind my eyes, couldn't stop some part of me from taunting: _It's easy to love 'em when you know they're already gone._

Except. Except.

Dean.

He was the one thing I could love and have it not be a mistake. One person I could be close to and know that he was never gonna leave, never fly up to the ceiling and burn.

I'd left him, damn it, for years, and then he came to get me and it was like no time had gone by.

_Except Jess_, that traitorous part of my head whispered.

_Yeah_, I shot back. _And how'd that turn out?_

So I got it, right then, at four in the morning at the Super 8. It hit me in the sternum full force: Dad's rules for hunters 101.

"When you find someone you connect with," he'd said. "You don't get to keep them. They're not _family_."

That was the moment I tried to fill my heart fill with concrete. I laid there listening to Dean wheeze and bound the fucking thing in barbed wire. Tossed it over the side, watched it sink to the bottom of my gut where nobody, no girl, could get at it. Where I couldn't yank it free if I tried.

That's what I told myself, anyway.

Love? Wasn't something I could have, not as long as I was a hunter, with Dean. He was the only one I could love safely, without putting him in danger. It wasn't the kind of love I'd had for Jess, the kind I might've had for the next girl down the road, but it was love, I was sure, all the same. A love that didn't act like gasoline that left me holding the match.

So I did my best to sink it, my heart, as far deep as I could, and fell asleep somehow, gone cold.

In the morning, I didn't look different. My eyes in the mirror were the same bleary with steam and sleep they always were first thing. That night, I didn't pick up the first blonde girl that I saw, didn't fuck her in the backseat and forget her name once I came.

I didn't act like Dean, I mean.

But I felt different, a little more distant from the world. A little safer, too.

I had Dean at my elbow and a fucked-up purpose in life and that, for then, was enough.


	4. Chapter 4

After Jess died and Cassie closed me down, it seemed sort of like we were on the same page, Sam and me. We had something sort of shitty in common: we were alone, both of us busted around the edges in ways that neither whiskey or stitches could fix.

It was cool. I mean, our lives still were craptastic—especially when Dad rushed back in and then bowed out for good just as fast—but neither of us was really looking for love. We didn't have time; we had problems a hell of a lot bigger to deal with than broken hearts.

But then there was Madison. I lose one lousy game of paper-rock-scissors and Sam falls head over heels in like, nothing. No time at all.

I was worried—I'll admit it—and a little jealous, too. It'd been a long time since any girl had looked at me like that, like I was her uber Prince Charming.

And Sam? Holy hell. I hadn't seen him smile like that in ages, since Stanford, since the first time he yakked to me about Jess.

Winchester Rules, though, you know? Of course the chick was a werewolf. The evil thing we were supposed to be killing? Of course she fucking was.

In the end, it didn't matter that he'd only known her for a couple of days. By then, I think, with all the stress of the visions and the Yellow-Eyed Demon and shit, Sam was ready to put his arms around something good, to race towards to the next chance at happy that presented itself and ask questions later.

Yeah. He handed over his heart to her easy as you please, and the worst part is? I know he meant it.

He really loved that girl.

And she was something special. No question. Something about her struck him right to the bone, and, ok, maybe I didn't totally get it, but that's the crazy thing about love. It never makes any real fucking sense. It's just a tangled mess of _feelings_ and talking and stuff that, in my experience, always ended in pain, either one person's or both.

Yeah, Cassie'd taught me that lesson good.

Truth be told, Sam was like especially fragile, I think, when we met Madison. Still hurting from Jess' death, I guess, though he never brought it up. Still pissed at Dad for pulling whatever bullshit had yanked me out of the reaper's hands. And he wasn't super thrilled with me, either, if his overall bitchiness ratio was any indication.

I overlooked that, though. Mostly. Because at least he was still there, at my side, where he was damn well supposed to be; and at that point, the boy seemed to be on a mission. He was scary methodical about it, our work, there for a while. Just wanted to kill anything, everything dark in the night.

It took me a while to realize why.

See, hunting for me, for Dad most of all, it'd always been about revenge. About _ending bad things_, period. Saving other people from becoming like us.

But Sam went another way. He didn't hunt for revenge, for any reason self-centered. No, he saw the fucking light:

He was saving people. Period. Doing what it took, whatever, just to keep them alive.

That was the difference between us, him and me, fundamental: he saw the actual people at the other end of the monster's jaws and wanted to rescue every one of them. For me, they were more like a concept, rather than real—like, oh yeah. Of course. Ending bad things means that you're saving people. Awesome. Now where's the next evil shit I can kill?

I think that's how it all got messed up, whatever his thing was with Madison. If I'd been alone, or with Dad, it wouldn't have been such a problem. Like, yeah, it really sucks that some woman got herself bit but bad's bad, no matter how pretty package it's in. Dad and me, we would've just ended it, ended her. I'd have washed my hands and cleaned my gun and burned the image out of her dying out my mind with Jack Daniels and whoever's company I could get for the night.

But no, Sam had to go make it all complicated, had to fall head-over-fucking-heels in love and crow to me about her humanity, about the person that was trapped by the monster—that was the monster, in my book—and to make the basic ending evil aspect of our job confusing with his moral ambiguity bullshit.

And it was awful—ungodly awful—listening to him murder a woman he loved.

Yeah, to me, in the end, that's what she was: a woman. Not a monster, not really. He'd convinced me. But we both knew what had to be done.

It makes me sick still, thinking about it, about seeing his face as we ran down the stairs, after, and threw ourselves into the car.

He didn't look at me for hours. Fucking eons. Turned his face to the window and pretended that he wasn't crying.

It was awful.

But after, I tried, okay? I fucking tried.

I let him sulk for two weeks at some shit motel down the coast. Put up with his red eyes and his hollow face, then I couldn't fucking take it anymore. Bundled him in the car and put much dust between us and the shadow of her corpse as I could. Pointed us south and drove down towards LA, got as far as we could before dark. We stopped in some little coastline town and I dragged him down the beach to a bar. Between us, the bartender and I poured beer down his throat until he started to look less dead than alive. It wasn't much of an improvement, sure, but the booze put some color in his cheeks, at least.

I matched him, shots to his pints, and by the time he'd had enough to be flushed, I had a plan.

There was this cute girl at the other end of the bar, one who didn't look a thing like Madison or Jess or any girl I'd ever seen him with. She was this short, curvy bottle-redhead of a thing in red lipstick, maybe more my type than his. Tan skin, a motorcycle helmet balanced on the stool beside her, and a Boston accent you could cut with a knife; oh, and thick-thighs squashed into a pair of shorts that screamed down to fuck like nobody's business. Damn.

Ok, yeah. She was totally my type.

But see, my plan wasn't about me; it was for Sam.

So I gave her the high beams until she slid over to us, expectant, and I stood up all gentleman-like, made room for her to sit between me and Sam.

It was loud as hell in there, music and drunk dudes hollering over each other. Sam was leaned all the way over the bar, saying something to the bartender, whatever, so I talked him up good to this girl.

"I mean, he's hurtin'," I said. I let my mouth go all soft and sad. "He just—he just lost somebody special, you know? It's—he's been really, really sad."

She blinked up at me, eyes a little wary behind her Crown Royal.

"Sad," she repeated after a minute. "So you're doing his dirty work for him, is that it?"

I held up my hands. "No, no, sweetheart. Nothing about you is dirty."

She laughed, hoarse and loud. "That shows what you know about me, peach."

"What I do know," I said, leaning over and not totally resisting the urge to put my hand on her thigh. "Is that you seem like a cool girl. And my brother here, for all of his faults, is nothing if not cool. He needs somebody to talk to, somebody that's not me. That's all."

She brushed my hand off her leg and downed the rest of her drink. "Somebody with tits, huh? Is that what you mean?"

I choked on my rail bourbon.

Yeah, she was nine kinds of my type.

But she was looking over at Sam, considering. She didn't say anything for a minute and there was part of me, not gonna lie, that hoped she'd say no. That she'd grab my hand and drag me someplace dark and warm and let me lose myself in her for awhile. But I knew that wouldn't be fair. To leave Sam alone right now.

She turned back to me, one eyebrow lost in her bangs. "Hmm. What did you say his name was, this sad little puppy of yours?"

"Sam," I said. "His name's Sam."

She turned away from me and reached over, poked at Sam's giant shoulder until he finally looked down. "Hey," she said, pitching her voice over the jukebox. "Sam. Hi. I'm Celine. Can I buy you a drink?"

Sam looked confused, like she was speaking Japanese or something, and I used that to my advantage. I tossed down some twenties and took my leave, thank you, because he surely got the message.

Hot girl, heavy drinking, your brother leaving you in relative peace?

It couldn't have been any fucking clearer, I think.

And, bam, yeah. He totally got it. Yeah, he did. But he really, really didn't like my red-headed condolence gift.

Maybe I should've just sent flowers.

He blew back into the room not 45 minutes behind me, drunker by half that I'd left him. Celine from Boston wasn't with him, sadly. Not even the smell of perfume on him, or a bit of lipstick on his neck; hell, I realized that he probably hadn't even _tried_ to seal the deal, after I'd worked so hard to provide.

Asshole.

And fuck, was he was pissed, a freaking bitter tornado from the second he slammed into the bathroom. He stood there breathing fire and glaring, all his emotional whatever aimed right the fuck at my reflection in the fogged-up glass.

I tucked my towel tighter and ignored him. Reached for my toothbrush.

"Is that what you fuckin' did after Cassie?" he slurred, slapping his back to the wall, unsteady.

I rolled my eyes at him in the mirror. Kept brushing.

"You just," he stuttered, "You just, what, fuckin' go all _Dean Winchester_ on the world, huh? Just stick your dick in the next person who'd lie down for it? Huh? Yeah. I bet you did. Dean. Fucking big man."

I spat minty crap everywhere and turned, poked my finger into his chest. "Look, Wobbles, maybe you should just back the hell off, huh? Go sleep it off, you fucking lightweight."

He batted my hand away, hard. "Don't touch me," he hissed, and okay, yeah, the boy had a right to decide who got to touch him and when, but, man, he was tipping like crazy. Like a_ I might fall and break several bones_-level spaz.

So I grabbed him by the collar and swung him around, dragged him out into the room and dropped him cold on his bed. He stared up at me, stunned, and I got right the hell up in his face.

"Sam," I said, slow, just so he could keep up. "You. Are. Drunk. Ok? You're upset. It's been a bad couple of weeks. I get it. But pull your shit together, dude." My voice went all Dad for a second. "Sleep it off already, alright?"

Which, damn. Sam? Did not like. Not at all.

"I'm not like you!" he bellowed, shooting Bud in my face and flapping his hands at my bare chest in a frankly pathetic attempt to push me away. Idiot.

"Yeah, no shit," I snorted, pinning his shoulders to the bed. "Because me? I would so not be here with you right now, Sammy, if that girl'd been into me."

I didn't mean to say it like that, exactly, but hell, I wasn't exactly sober myself.

I never did pick the right times to be honest, anyway.

Sammy's face went nuclear, like it did when he was little, right before he had an epic, earth-melting tantrum.

"You—!" he wheezed. "You think you can just push anybody at me—some girl I don't even _know_!— and that's gonna make it better? Fuck! I killed Madison, Dean! I killed her cause we couldn't save her and she didn't do anything _wrong_. Don't you get that? She wasn't evil! And you think that somebody I don't even know can replace her?

"No, man, no," I said, because when he put it that way, truthful, god; it sounded real fucking bad, and for a second, I thought he was gonna hit me. I wouldn't have blamed him.

But the worm turned another way, swung him from fury to grief in an instant; he put his hands on my face, pulled me down, pulled me close, got me in a freaking Vulcan death grip like he was afraid I'd run away or something. Fat chance.

He stared up at me, his eyes leaking like crazy. "Damn it. I think I loved her," he said, almost quiet.

And there was something in his voice, some kinda sad that said he was haunted by something more than just Madison. Right then, I didn't know who he was talking about, exactly—Madison or Jess or both of them, somehow: all the girls he'd loved before tangling together into one big web of hurt, maybe. I don't know.

Anyway. It wasn't my place to question, right then. And seeing him hurt like that—

It was like when we were kids, when Sam would need stitches or a shot or something: seeing him get the needle made me cry harder than when I had to get stuck.

I hated seeing him cry. Hell, I still do.

So I swooped in and got a good grip on his shirt collar. Petted my other hand through his hair. "I know," I said, soothing. "I know you did, baby."

I'm not sure where that came from, that baby, but it felt just right at the time.

He was so damn drunk, though, he didn't even notice; it sailed straight up over his head.

"You don't _know_," he managed, words sliding in between sobs. "Dean. You—you always leave people behind. You and Dad, you could always just let people go. Just throw 'em out and move on, you know. And I—I can't! I can't be like that. You and Dad."

He shook me a little, glaring, and I could feel the anger building back up in his chest.

"You were both so good at burning through people," Sam said. "Afraid to get attached to anyone, huh? No, fucking _terrified_, Dean! You are! You're afraid of the hurt after, I know. Aren't you?"

He looked me full-on and he sneered, rolled his lips back from his teeth like a wild thing. Like a monster. "Yeah," he hissed. "Yeah, maybe it's no wonder, huh? That Cassie fucking dumped you, man. That you're always alone? You're a coward. You're a fucking _coward_, you asshole! Get off me!"

He shoved me, hard, and then it was like the fight just fell out of him, like he'd used up the rest of his strength trying to shake me off. He froze, stopped dead, and I could see it: the moment he realized what he was saying, what he'd _said_, how he'd fucking twisted the knife in my chest, the bastard.

Boy's always known how to fight dirty.

He damn well should've. I'm the one that showed him how.

Sam shuddered, then, got a little twitch in his lip as his stare went soft, his face streaked red and wet, and he reached for me, got me snagged by the elbows and close again. So close. I got caught there for a minute, stuck in his hands and his eyes as he traced the hurt on my face with them both, the same way he would check me for injuries after a fight.

_Tell me when it hurts_, he'd say, his fingers moving over my skin.

I didn't have to tell him, this time.

"Shit, man, I'm sorry," he breathed, hot beer again all over my face.

I squirmed away, or tried to, but that just got him pawing, limp fingers falling over my chest and sliding through the damp, trying to find something to hold on to, and that was fine. But when he reached the edge of my towel and tugged—

I mean, he gets handsy when he drinks, always has, but that move was too fucking much.

I pushed him away. "Go to sleep, Sam," I said, knocking him back into the pillows.

"I'm sorry," he panted at me. "Dean. Shouldn't have—I'm so fucking sorry."

"Go to sleep," I said again. "Please, Sammy. Just close your eyes, and yeah. You need to sleep." I backed away careful, like he was a grizzly, my eyes still fixed on his face.

He sighed, gave me one last wet blink before flopping over onto his stomach, burying his face in the scratchy covers. Went still.

I pulled on some boxers and hit the lights. Laid down on my bed.

Listened to him dream and weep and toss around like a shoe in the dryer.

Me, I didn't get a wink.

For the first time in years, that night, I thought about Shannon. How hard it'd been to leave her. The first one. How the next one hurt a little less bad, and the next, 'till it'd gotten to be like tearing off a band-aid, every time we pulled out of a town.

God, Shannon. I hadn't thought about her in years.

The soft of her hair between my fingers. The way she laughed so hard that she'd snort. The curve of her smile under my chin.

She used to sigh every time that I kissed her. Like it was the best thing she'd ever felt.

It'd been a long, long time since anybody had made me feel that way, like I had with her. Like I was worth so damn much to them, like I was everything they'd ever needed.

But Sam, drunk or not—he was right. I hadn't even tried to be that for anyone in years, it felt like. Hell, maybe it was no wonder that things hadn't worked out with Cassie. Maybe I'd forgotten how to give myself up and over that way, in the whole way that mattered; hell, in the way Sam just had in less than three days.

Sure, he was torn up now. Would be, I was sure now, for a good long while, in a way that one good lay wouldn't fix. But he'd also meant something real to somebody, had somebody mean something like that to him, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't fucking green over that as I lay there listening to him get sober in the dark. No, I was so jealous I couldn't see straight, that he'd had that, that he'd _been_ that, even if having his heart ripped out and stomped on was the final result.

At least he knew that his still worked.

I lay there that night— after Madison died, after Sam killed her—listening to him sob as he slept, and I wondered if anybody would cry like that over me, ever again.


	5. Chapter 5

Dad died first.

Of course he did.

Just before, before Dad died, having Dean at my side had been enough. I mean, things weren't perfect—far from it—but it felt like we might finally be reaching level ground. Getting used to each other again, relearning the ropes and finding this rocky sort of equilibrium where we knew how to walk in step with each other again. But just as I was getting used to it—getting the hang of life on the road with Dean—life, the universe and everything else had to go and do it's best to rip us part again and again and fucking _again_. Like it had to really drive the message home, that even the good-bad-balance between us that we'd managed to cobble together was tenuous at best but more often than not, a straw house in the middle of tornado alley.

Dad's death was the first blow. In a way, it was his final _fuck you_ to us both. Only our father could save his son's life and make death seem more honorable than being alive.

We didn't talk about Dad's death, not when it happened. It left us both suddenly off kilter, too stunned to muster up a conversation about it.

And we didn't talk about Dean's up-close-and-personal with the reaper, hell no. After the shock wore off and we stumbled away from that fucking hospital, I couldn't rattle Dean hard enough to get him to admit to anything resembling a real feeling. No, we just sailed away on sails made of vinyl and steel and pretended that neither of us was the wiser.

Which was, perhaps, in a way, Dad's legacy for us – repression and silence and denial in the face of tragedy. Can't say the man didn't leave us anything.

I don't really know what it says about me, but I never dreamed about Dad after he died. Didn't wake up in sweats of panic or fear, didn't dream of his body on the floor, my hands on his face, cold, the look in his dull, dark eyes as they rolled back into his head.

I was pissed at him, no question. He'd done more than enough to earn that. But his death didn't haunt me. It felt more like a kind or relief. No more looking over my shoulder for him to come uproot me from my life again, no more waiting for another guilt trip over things that happened before I was a year old.

Dean, though, in a way, I'd just gotten him back, so his brush with death haunted me, constantly. Images of his body wrapped in white, the machines built to keep him alive singing the song of death, the way his fingers were heavy in my hand, unresponsive and still no matter how hard I squeezed. The first few weeks after, I saw that, I _felt_ that every damn time I closed my eyes.

Even Madison's death didn't haunt me like that. The flash of the muzzle pressed to her forehead in the moment before, the silver sick bright against the flush of her skin, the sound she made when she died— I couldn't shake it. She was right there, giving up the ghost in my dreams, every night for weeks, this feedback loop of love and beauty lost in my own hands, _by_ my own hands, tying my stomach into knots, till the channel suddenly changed, flipped back to Dean again, dying, Dean, always so fucking pushy, always needing to be the center of attention, even when he was inside my head.

And after a while, that shit hanging out in my head, that sick rot of fear, loss, and fear like I'd never known, it started to fester and morph into this terrible fury, this anger that had no place to go but down, deeper and deeper into my head and my gut. I mean, Dean was still my brother, I still loved the stupid bastard, ok, but there was part of me that was so fucking done with him, with the bullshit I could have sworn he lived to put me through.

At first, my anger was cut with worry. I was terrified of losing him because I had, damn it; for a few unending hours, Dean had been nothing more than a body, quiet, one that lay there in the hospital still and silent, and I hated how that made me feel, how _he_ made me feel: like a kid alone and scared like somebody who needed protecting, like someone whose life-long protector was gone.

So my anger was more than just worry, see, because I fucking resented him for leaving me, for making me feel like that, like his freaking little brother again who'd be lost without him at my side.

But I shoved it all down, buried it under the day-to-day bullshit of our lives, my powers, the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all the people we were trying to save.

So yeah, there were plenty of reasons for me to be angry at Dad, at the whole damn world, somedays, and yet it was Dean who stayed at the top of my shit list, even so—especially after Illinois. After the dijin. After he almost died on me, yet again.

See, that whole night that Dean was gone, trapped in that rancid warehouse without me knowing where to look, I was frantic. I kept thinking that this was it. I was going to lose him for real. For good.

But luck was on my side for once in my life—luck and the GPS in Dean's phone—and I found him all strung up and barely hanging on. His flesh was cold under my fingers but he woke up, met my gaze.

My heart went tight in my chest, and even with Dean in my arms, even being able to feel every kick of his breath under my hands, every tremor of pain, I couldn't help but think it—just because I'd saved him this time didn't mean I always would in the future. Because this would happen again, no question; our lives were too bizarre and dangerous to pretend otherwise.

I couldn't let that train of thought continue; it hurt too much to envision the next time Dean would be cold like this, would be shivering and pitching back from the edge of death again.

Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe, one day, I'd have to watch him die.

_Stop_, I thought, yanking Dean to his feet.

_Stop_, I thought again, wilder, as I shoved him into the car and drove with one hand on his knee, holding us both upright.

_Stop_, I thought, soft, watching his eyes flutter, his body sagging into sleep.

I fell asleep with my hand on his back, watching my fingers lift with each ragged breath.

For a day or so, after, I thought that this one, he'd take seriously. This near-death experience he'd treat as something worthy of reflection, of serious consideration.

He was sitting on the other bed, feet flat on the floor and pointed my way, in theory, but his face was somewhere else. Back in that dream world, I guess.

"I thought I'd lost you," I said, a little softer than I meant to.

His throat hitched and his eyes flicked up to meet me, just for a second. "You almost did."

His head slumped and he stared at the floor, at his shoes, at the place where our knees almost knocked, and the stupid relief I felt was heavier then, more real, than it had been the moment I'd seen him the night before, his hands strung up over his head and the life drained out from his face. He'd looked closer to death, farther from me, than he had when his heart got zapped, or than he had after the car crash. And shit, it made me sick that I had so much to compare it to, that I was carrying this photo album in my head filled with all these different snapshots of Dean Almost Dead, these images that were horribly similar and yet so removed from the Dean in front of me, the one who was alive and hurting, sure, who'd suffered something I couldn't imagine and yet here he fucking was, right here, close enough to touch.

He was in my arms before I knew that I'd moved, before my brain realized that we were standing, that I'd yanked him up and grabbed him without any warning.

His hands snapped up to my elbows and I was sure he'd pull away, shove me back and make some crack about me being a Yeti or something.

But he didn't.

Instead, he turned his face into my shirt and let his breath out, all of it in a big rush. He shoved his hands around my back, rough and needy, and he hugged me back.

I didn't say anything. I think that would have ruined the mood, the sense that this was ok, us being close like this, because he was, because we were together. Because we were both safe.

And if my shirt was wet when he let me go, finally, neither of us said anything.

Dean wasn't okay after that.

Not that I blame him.

It was the first time, I think, he really started to doubt our lives, who we are and what we do. But instead of getting revenge thirsty—like Dad would've—he just got sad. I mean, more so than normal, to the point where even Dean Winchester's best bravado couldn't hide it anymore.

It was like he fully conceptualized everything that we'd lost through the years. All that death and the two of us the only ones standing at the end.

I felt him drifting away from me, but this time, it was into his own darkness. It wasn't something I could bring him back from, wasn't a monster I could kill or a ghost to salt and burn. No, it was a black hole of suck that had found its way inside him, and that made it worse. Not a damn thing I could do about it if I couldn't even reach it.

He was a foot away from me every fucking day, just like always, but after the dijin, it was like he wasn't really there at all.

He did stop going out for a while, sure; a necessary compromise, given that he couldn't walk two feet without wheezing for over a week. But one night I came back with Fritos and some Dr. Pepper—his special request dinner of choice—to find him up and showered and wearing some truly offensive aftershave.

"What?" he said when I stared. "Does my hair look weird or something?"

"Your hair—?" I said. "Dude. Your hair is the least of your problems."

He rolled his eyes and pushed past me, snagging the keys as he went. "I need a drink," he said, "and some company other than you. So sue me." He popped open the door and stopped outside in the hallway, expectant. "Sam. You coming or what?"

My stomach dropped. Crap. I knew what this was.

He had this trick, one than he'd started after the first time that he'd nearly kicked it, after the faith healer's hoodoo had brought him back at the expense of someone else, and revived with sickening success, if you want to call it that, in the weeks after Dad's death: playing his pale face and frail frame as an advantage, honing the invalid angle to a fine, hollow point. Instead of getting as far away from near-death as he could, he'd figured out how to make it work for him in our dealings with the rest of the world. Hell, it fit so neatly into his arsenal, once he learned how to work it just right: in gas stations, in bars, at Target, whatever, he could flip from lothario to Tiny Tim with one sad little smirk and we'd be drinking for free the rest of the night.

Well, he would. I couldn't always stomach the proceeds of that particular scheme.

Usually, I'd sit and stew and glare and he'd play dumb—with me, with the girl of the night at his side—big green eyes with just a hint of fragile until he got bored or itchy or both and slid away, two fingers on the girl's back and his _don't wait up_ wink bouncing over her shoulder.

Stupid me, thinking that he'd take this thing seriously, that he'd learned not to treat death—_his_ death, for fuck's sake—as a freaking joke, as a cheap and easy way to get laid.

It was like taking tequila from a baby that night and a dozen after: Dean wielding his wasted-away face like a crossbow and taking out every cute girl in sight with his wan smile, his soft heavy sigh, the light in his stupid green eyes.

I should've stopped going out with him. That would've been the smart thing. But part of me was right back there in worry, was still waiting for his face to go ghost and his body to slow because he'd almost died yet _again_, damn it, and despite all evidence to the contrary that he was fucking okay, I found it really, really hard to let it go, that image of him in that warehouse. The dead weight of him in my arms.

That sense that I'd see it all again soon. Those god awful snapshots in my eyes, like colored slides, one right after the other. That sense that next time, maybe I wouldn't be able to—

_Stop_, I thought, I made myself think, I forced down my throat like a shot. _Stop_. He's here. He's fine. Just fucking stop. Just like, be in the moment and focus on him now—which would have been a good plan, had he not been right in the middle of his Sick Puppy Who Needs a Pat on the Head world tour.

We hadn't talked about what he'd been through. Not really. But he'd sure as hell spill fake details of his near-dying to any stranger who'd listen, especially ones without a Y chromosome who'd hold his hand. He'd fake cough his way through some bogus story of illness, of his close brush with death, and wink at me every time they said, "Oh, you poor thing!" and paid for yet another round.

I tried to be patient with him, with his self-serving bullshit—really, I did—but after two weeks of that crap, night after night, I finally hit my limit. Didn't get through half my Coors in Osage Beach, Missouri, before I shot up and said: "I'm done."

Dean peered up at me, his face lost in the dingy light. "Need something stronger?"

"What?" I snapped. "No. I'm going home." I waggled my hand under his nose. "Keys, dude."

He looked pissed for a second, then slid it under a smirk. "Ok, ok, Sammy. You and your right hand got a hot date, huh? I get it." Managed to get the jab in just as the waitress flitted by, to leer at her loud as she passed.

"Keys," I repeated. "Now."

He huffed and made a big show of shifting his hips, digging the ring out of his pocket and jamming it into my hand.

"Can't believe you're gonna make me walk," he grumbled, meeting my scowl with his own. "Me in my delicate condition and all."

"Oh, please. It's like four blocks, man. It's not gonna kill you."

The words were out of my mouth before I realized and Dean looked as shocked as I felt but, fuck, I didn't care.

"You heard me," I said, furious, and bolted before I could meet his eyes.

XxX

There's nothing worse than being sober when your body was expecting to be trashed.

I got back to the room not 10 minutes later, no time at all off the clock, and I couldn't shake it, that sense of fury. Now that it was out there, my anger, it hadn't abated, still wouldn't leave me the hell alone. Damn Dean and his pathological need to be loved all the time by people he didn't even know when I was the one who'd been there, who'd watched him go all the way to the brink and past and still been there when he came back.

_Me_. I had. Every time.

And sure, there'd been years when I was gone, but those were different, water under some abandoned bridge, and fuck, why wasn't I enough, now, especially with Dad long dead and gone?

I was the one putting in the fucking effort, trying to keep this matchbox ship afloat in the wake of, oh, his three full-on attempts at dying, and Dean wouldn't even do me the justice of acknowledging it. Just went on treating the whole thing, the little matter of his fucking existence like a joke.

_Treated me like one, too_, a little voice in my head said, kicking kindling onto the fire.

My face got hot and I started sweating, swearing and stomping around, circling my realm of crazy. I kept seeing Dean's face at the bar that night, every night, forever, always looking over my shoulder, looking past me, looking for somebody that I wasn't and it all wound up inside me like an angry clockwork mouse chasing its own fucking tail for eternity and for a second I couldn't breathe, couldn't think anything other than:

He's not supposed to leave me. He's _family_. But he did almost did so—

Why am I still here? Why am I putting up with this shit? I was happier when I wasn't—

(_He doesn't want me._)

He thinks it's _funny_. Fucking hilarious that he isn't dead. Came so close but isn't—

He doesn't need me

(_like I need him_)

He doesn't wanna be saved? Doesn't want me looking after his ass? Fine.

Better to get out of his way.

(_I should go I should go I should_)

And it was crazy and I knew it but I was a handsbreadth from my bag, five minutes for making a run away from his stupidly familiar face, his sweet ass smile, the one I only saw in profile, as I waited for him to see me, for him to say—

"What in the actual fuck, Sam?" he wheezed, hanging in the open doorway.

"Uh," I stuttered. "Hi?"

He reached back and slammed, narrowed his eyes at me like a woozy cobra and pinned himself to the wall, sweating and yet pretending to be cool.

"Hi?" he repeated. "That all you gotta say to me?"

"Uh. You have a good time?" I tried through clenched teeth.

He made this harsh little noise, a slurry laugh that got caught in his throat. "_A good time_?" he mimicked. "Wow. Thanks for your concern. Don't fucking strain yourself."

I rolled my eyes and tried to back off, because now that he was here, right in front of me and steaming, talking about this shit seem like a terrible idea. Being pissed alone was one thing. Having it out right here, right now, was another.

"Whatever, Sloshy," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not gonna fight with you."

Wrong answer.

He moved pretty quick for a drunk guy; three swung staggers and he was in my face, snarling:  
"Who says I'm drunk, asshole? And who says it's your fucking choice?"

The whiskey came off of him in waves, and trashed or not, he looked so ridiculous, such a fucking cliché of beer-swilling stupid that I laughed, more uneasy than amused. "Put it away, Dean. Shit."

Yeah, he didn't like that.

I got a flash of teeth before he shoved me, put all his weight into his hands and threw them at my chest. I rocked back hard, my ass banging into the desk, and fuck. I gave up all pretense of playing nice.

"The hell is your problem?" I barked. "I haven't done anything to you! What, did you let that waitress down? You got something to prove to somebody?"

He ducked away, batting my fists with his own. "Fuck you," he hissed. "You left me."

"I got sick of your shit!" I yelled. "One night, finally, I've had enough of you acting like an idiot, alright?"

"You son of a bitch!" he shouted. "I'm acting like an idiot? I'm not the one running out on civilization! Hiding behind books or science or me, damn it, cowering behind and waiting for me to fucking take a dive!" He shoved his finger at me, one-handed fury. "I'm fine, ok? I'm not dead, I'm so freaking alive you can't stand it, dude. You can't stand to see somebody actually enjoying life, ok, actually having a good fucking time, actually _living_, huh? Unlike you!"

"Living?" I spat. "Seriously? Chewing people up, going through girls, and spitting out what you decide you don't need? Not giving a damn about any of them—hell, anybody!—but yourself? Oh, yeah, wow," I said, sneering. "You nailed it. I am so fucking jealous of the Dean Winchester way."

I saw it coming, the rest of that awful thought, and I damn well said it anyway. "Oh, I'm sorry. Right. That's Dad's way, huh? Gotta keep the family tradition there, don'tcha?"

His face was all twisted, somewhere between sick and a snarl. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The fuck you don't!"

He shook his head, tried to laugh me off. _Again_. Like always. Threw his hands up in this parody of surrender and edged towards the door.

"Whatever. Whatever, Sam, alright? Take some freaking Midol and sleep it off, and I'll just—"

I lost it.

He was the one who'd started this, damn it! and fuck if I was gonna let him walk out the fucking door before I made him see what an ass he was being, what a freaking _jerk_, so I just up grabbed him, got my fingers tight in his jacket and wouldn't let him go.

He wiggled like a fish on the line, gasping: "Fuck! What the hell is your problem?"

"You!" I shouted, and shit, did that feel good. "You're my fucking problem, alright? You almost died, asshole! Again! You were almost dead and gone for the third time in a fucking year and now you just wanna pretend that everything's fine?! That—that you can just spend the rest of your life taking what you need and not caring who you have to hurt to get it!"

He looked right at me then and I could see the click as he caught up to me, to the conversation. All of it.

"Oh," he said, slow. "Well. Dad said a lot of shit, Sam. Believe me, I know. But he was right about one thing, ok? When you find somebody you care about, the kind of lives that we lead, you don't get to keep 'em, period, and there's no use pretending otherwise, no matter how much we might want to." His eyes went a little softer and his hand closed over my wrist, the one still strung in his collar. "Gotta say, I thought you of all people would understand that."

Hearing that, it was like eating a punch. I rocked back with it, gaping, but Dean, he just went with me. Didn't take advantage like he would in a fight, just let his body move parallel to mine.

There was this long, sad silence, and I realized, after a minute, that we were breathing in time.

My voice, when it came, was a sound I didn't recognize. "But I'm still here. Ok? Still here. With you. And if I didn't want to be, damn it, trust me. I wouldn't. You gotta know that by now, man."

He chuckled, his fingers chasing over my pulse. "Yeah," he said. "Sam. I know. You're the exception, see, that proves the rule."

I'm not sure I was expecting in that moment—no, yeah, I do. I thought he'd do anything to break it, that soft honest mood between us. Sing, scream, Riverdance. Something.

But he didn't.

Instead, he pitched in and drove his hands up to my face. Stared at me for a second, like he was afraid I was gonna bolt; and when I didn't, when I refused to flinch, he pulled me down easy and pressed the hot sour of his mouth into mine.

For a split second, I wasn't sure what was happening, didn't trust what my brain was telling me—but then his fingers drag raced down my jaw, fluttered over my neck and it was this weird mirror version of how we'd always been, how his hands on my skin always made me feel still, made me feel safe, even when I had no business being either, even when the rest of our world was going straight to Hell, to the highwater of Dad's latest drink: even then, there had always been Dean.

I'd always needed him, always loved him far beyond all reason, because he was nothing if not an ass, and somehow, it didn't seem a step too far to want him that way, too, especially when he was soaking words into my skin like water, searing my anger away with his touch.

"Sammy," he breathed between my teeth. "Fuck, come _on_, Sam."

And "Come on what?" got stuck in my neurons, didn't made it anywhere near my lips because Dean'd taken those for his own.

His hands went bear trap around my neck and I flailed, my arms valley wide until his tongue found mine, awkward and hot and now and my body cut off access to my brain and did whatever the fuck it wanted. Which was—

My elbows banged behind his back and I tried to snag my fingers in his coat, but it was the leather one he loved, Dad's, and that made it hard to hold him, especially as he snapped in my arms, dug his nails into my skin and kissed me hard, first fast and almost furious, like he wasn't sure I was with him, like he thought I was gonna fight back. I was the sober one, after all.

But I didn't.

I couldn't.

Drunk or not, he was here, with me, real and living, and all I could do was open my mouth all the way and try to give as good as I got. Show him I had both feet in this, that I could be as steadfast in his life as he'd always been in mine.

He sighed, this little ricochet of approval, and changed tactics. Twitched his hips and shot one hand down to my waist. Slowed his kisses to a crawl, his thumb rubbing crop circles under the cut of my jeans.

I got a hand in his hair and turned him to meet me in long, fat kisses that bled one into the other, that left just enough room for us to breathe, just enough space between us for him to rock into my thigh, for his fingers to sneak my zipper down and squeeze my cock too much just right until I was stuttering, my lips closing at all the wrong times and my voice going haywire, Dean's breath huff happy chanting: "Yeah, Sammy, yeah. Fuck, let me, baby, let me. C'mon. Gonna make it good for you. Make it so good."

One minute he was there flush against me and the next he wasn't, was on the floor shoving my jeans down and my boxers aside and—laughing.

Laughing?

I got his head in my hand again, made him look up.

"S'wa?" I slurred.

His little smile drifted up over my cock and crashed into the shoals of my heart. "Who'd have thought you were so fucking pretty?" he said, like that made a damn bit of sense. "I mean, hell, Sam, you're—"

He gave my cock a yank and ok, he could have been speaking Klingon for all I cared with his mouth so close to me. I felt him snicker through his tongue, through his amazing fucking tongue as he turned donuts on my dick, looping and teasing, the son of a bitch, and when I opened my eyes again to glare, he winked at me.

_Winked_, like I don't even—?

My brain was confused but my hand in his hair got tight, pulled his head into my crotch and he liked that. Damn. Shot dry lightning from his eyes and dropped his jaw, got two hands on my hips and tugged, and at least that stopped him laughing, my cock sealing his mouth shut.

Mine, on the other hand, wouldn't stay closed. Couldn't, as he leaned back as far as I'd let him and came right back at me, his fist holding me tight as I shuddered, fought the urge to fuck hard and deep.

"Damn it, Dean. Fuck. _Fuck_. I can't—I can't—"

He groaned low and dirty and pulled away enough to say, "You can. You _can_," and I couldn't help myself, after that. Couldn't help but shove my cock between his lips and dig my nails into his scalp and damn if he didn't love that, too; if his eyes didn't roll up and his whole body shake as he sucked me, as he let me fuck his mouth like it was nothing and as good as it was — and it was fucking amazing— I wanted more, everything, all of it, all of him, all at once, right the hell now.

Before the thought was all the way formed, I was pushing him off my cock, yanking him up hard by the hair, tugging him up 'til his mouth swung right below mine, his lips slung in this _oh, yeah. I got you _smile_._

I growled, dug my hands into his clothes, got a palm on the smooth skin of his hip, the other one sliding under that freaking leather coat, over his collarbone, singing more _more more._

And Dean?

Dean, he just kept right on, his mouth all smeary and gorgeous, nine kinds of stars in his eyes. He tucked his fingers in safe at the nape of my neck and hummed, "Sammy, what do you want, baby? Tell me what you need, huh? C'mon. Tell me."

There was a buzz, a full-on hum, zipping through me as he petted my skin and I couldn't make my mouth work to answer him, damn it, but Dean—my big brother, always knew what I needed—was a step ahead of me, shoving those lips into mine again, deep and salty, one hand still curved around my cock, pulling on it slowly, teasing, fingertips dancing around the crown.

At that point, though, I wasn't in the mood to be teased.

I lunged, wrestled him out of that stupid coat and tore into his shirts like wrapping paper, and yes; he was every inch as breathtaking as he clearly thought he was, as I knew, abstractly, that he must've been.

I stared for too long and he let me, relished it, stood there fucking preening, and I wanted to throw him down and trace every bit of him with my fingers, to learn every scar with my tongue, memorize every turn of his body with my own. I wanted to remake the map of his flesh so that he'd always come back to me no matter how far we drifted apart. But not now. No, not with the way he was moving, repaying the favor without warning; my hands tangling for a moment in the sleeves of my shirt as he ripped it over my head.

He was impatient, then, wrenching me to him, pressing our chests together, like he was trying to touch all of me at once. And I was onboard with that plan.

We hung in limbo for a moment, my cock still hard and heavy, pressed into the rough denim of his jeans. His stubble rasped my skin where his face was flush to my neck, each breath shifting it just enough to send little shocks down my spine.

Fucking hell, I wanted him.

Because, even then, with him warm and raring to go, his body overwhelming my senses, it was still hard to believe that he was alive. That he'd made it, that _we'd_ made it this far, that we were together.

That I was here, now. And so was he.

"Sam," he rumbled, deep whiskey musk, and it jolted me, that sound. Got me back into the moment, made me remember what we were in the middle of, and then it was my turn to smirk and shove him back onto the closest bed.

It was just a few tugs to pull off boots and socks and jeans and _yes_—

Dean lounged back in the pillows, stripped down and easy, one arm tucked behind his head, the other low on his belly, all muscle and swagger right there display. Confident as hell, if his dick was any indication.

"This," I said, finally getting my stupid mouth back in the game. "I want _this_. Want you."

He grinned, shifted his hips a little to affirm the wisdom of this decision. "So. What are you waiting for?"

And I—

I couldn't answer that one, not in words, but damn if I was gonna let him see that, see any kind of hesitation now. So I shot him an eyebrow and grabbed his gaze, held it as I kicked off my jeans, scrabbled out of my boxers, and crawled up on top of him, slower than I wanted to, sure, but the look on his face all shivery and sex made patience feel like a virtue for fucking once in my life.

I straddled his waist with my thighs and knocked our cocks together and he was so beautiful, fuck, curling flush and pliant beneath me.

"Yeah," Dean said, more breath than voice. He got his nails in my back and hauled me even closer to him, sighed so hot when our chests met.

"Yeah," he grunted again, craning his neck to kiss me. Little stolen kisses that fell across my bottom lip, jaw, neck, collarbone. Tiny touches that undid me even faster than his mouth had on my dick.

"Fuck," I groaned in his face, my hips shoving into his.

He chuckled, low and throaty. "That's the idea," he said.

"Is it?" I asked, grinning.

"You ass," he snorted, suddenly flipping us, whumping me back into the covers like I weighed nothing. Like I was still a little kid.

He pinned me there with his body, started slowly, working his hips in circles like a freaking exotic dancer—grinding down on me, _fuck_, hitting my nerves dead on, in just the right ways like he knew them already. Knew _me_ already.

He stunned me stupid like that, reduced my body to hot little thrusts and low thready whimpers, pulled me apart with his cock's heavy drag against mine. I tried to arch, tried to get more of him to touch me, _please_, but he just laughed, squeezed my waist with his knees and pinned me there flat.

And that should have pissed me off, maybe. Should have made me spin him, pin him, and just take what I wanted, but fuck, it lit me up, having him hold me like that. And fuck if he didn't see it, what he was doing to me, didn't smirk as he grabbed my hands, seared them to his waist, to the soft curve of his ass, and oh, hell. He felt so fucking good.

He fell forward to kiss me again, panting, his fingers still threaded in mine. I caught his ass in my palms and squeezed and he jolted, his kisses falling sloppy, then, open and wet. He bit my lip and rocked back into my hands even as he fucked down and somehow, through all that, he kept talking. Folded his voice between us, licked the words into my mouth, cast them past my ear, all "Yeah, Sammy," and "Fuck, so pretty," and "Oh you like that, don't you? Huh? Yeah you do."

It was completely overwhelming. He was. The twitch of his muscles under my fingers, the sweat pooling at the base of his back, and the sudden sense of what it would be like to have him in me, my cock trapped between us as he thrust in, stretched me wide and sucked on my tongue, oh, and he must have sensed it, how close I was to losing my shit, because he reared back, the bastard, got away just enough to make me whine, make me twist my head to get his mouth back, shit, but he slapped a hand on my chest and pushed. Got his mouth on my jaw and kept talking.

"You"—he nipped at my throat—"were being such a little bitch tonight."

He shoved my shoulder to the mattress, which, _fuck_—

"That I couldn't"—a harder thrust—"let it go."

He tangled a fist into my hair, held me tight, so tight—

"I couldn't focus, Sammy. Me. I couldn't get my shit together, right?"

He ground down perfect and hard and laughed as I gasped, his eyes wide above mine.

"Couldn't put two words together, baby, no, you got me so wound up, couldn't say my own name, yet alone talk sweet to that girl, huh, Sammy? You messed me up so good—"

He dragged his tongue behind my ear and groaned and my cock started screaming yes, _Dean please gonna_—

"Fuck," he hissed. "Yeah. So good, baby, that I couldn't even close the deal with her, huh? Even though she was so sweet for me, oh _shit_, Sam, she made me so hot but I couldn't touch her, couldn't put my hands on her and not think of you—"

I was there, right the fuck there, and then—

And then my brain took over, made me hear what he'd just said and shit, oh shit, what had I done?

What had I let _Dean_ do?

There was this awful cycle of pictures in my head—the waitress tonight, the blonde last week, the redhead three states ago, and me. All lumped together. All the same in Dean's book, we were.

We were the ones he'd always leave.

I don't think I've ever gone soft that fast in my life.

"_What_?" I gasped, grabbing for the sheet even as he kept rolling, racing right towards his own end like he had no fucking clue what he'd just said. I shoved him again—when the fuck did he get so heavy?—and that got his attention at last.

"What?" he moaned, dropping his eyes to mine, his voice still stuck on sex. Then he felt me trying to scrabble away, felt me fading against his belly, and saw me, then, really saw, and stuttered to a stop.

"Dude," he said, confused. "What the—?"

He looked down to where we were still locked together, looked as though he had any fucking right to see me like this—burning and naked shameful, spread out under his hips like some girl he'd picked up just for the night.

I couldn't get away from him fast enough.

I hauled him off by his thighs, him still a stupid thick weight of confusion. Flew out of bed and into my boxers, all the time fighting off the swimmy feeling roaring in my ears. The one that promised hurt and anger and tears.

Little kid-brother tears.

Stupid, little Sammy, misunderstanding the world again. Making more out of this than it ever was meant to be. I'd read things wrong: treated a kiss like it meant love, when all it meant was—_Hey, you're here. Me too. Let's fuck._ Of course. Of course, I had.

I wanted to break something.

"Sam?" he said, his voice hanging crooked in the air.

I turned around, automatic, didn't want to, and there he was, sitting up on the bed, his skin shining under the yellow light from his sweat and from mine. The sheen made his hickeys— mine, the ones I'd put there—shine, hot roses blooming in the crook of his neck, his shoulders, his throat. He was hard as fuck, even still, his lips blood fat from my teeth. Absolutely debauched.

My stomach lurched.

I couldn't even look at him, let alone speak, and I was across the room before he could get out another syllable. I slammed the bathroom door shut and sank to the floor beside the toilet - not sure what was going to come up first: my dinner or my pride.

I leaned back against the cold edge of the tub and let it sink down into me: the realization that Dean had just tried to fuck me out of convenience. Me, this girl, the one last week, the ones for the rest of our lives: whatever, it was all the same to Dean. To him, I was just another warm body in a long line of meaningless, warm bodies, and worse: I'd almost let him.

"People are tools," Dad said somewhere, way back inside my head. "You get what you want from them and you get out."

And it hit me, then, the uneasy feeling in full. Swallowed me up in little kid tears that streaked over my face, made my breath tight and my eyes itch and oh, how I hated them both, right then. Dad and Dean.

On the other side of the door, he was saying my name. Banging on the cheap wood and begging me to open up. But he sounded—unfamiliar and far away. Like listening to a stranger speak secondhand through a papery motel room wall.

I couldn't bring myself to answer, couldn't think straight enough to find the words. Just kept hearing Dad, a bow echo of another voice read through another door more than a decade before:

"You don't get to keep them. You have to get what you want from them and get out."

Dean jiggled the knob fruitless—I half expected him to pick the lock—and then, surprise: he gave up. Went quiet. Gave me room.

I sat there for a long time, getting my breathing under control, my heartbeat back to normal. Shoved the water off my face with a sketchy towel and took a deep breath.

"You're the exception, see, that proves the rule," Dean'd said.

And I'd been dumb enough to believe him.

Eventually, I had to move, my ass long gone numb from the tile. I blew my nose, drank water right from the tap and carefully eased the door open.

And Dean was there. Of course he was.

He was staring, freaking honed right in on the bathroom door, dressed in sweats and an ancient t-shirt. He looked like a kid waiting in front of the principal's office, waiting to find out what his atonement would be.

I thought I was ok, had my shit together fine, but the look on his face sent a jolt of unease through my veins. I had to grab the doorframe to keep from falling down.

He got slowly to his feet, his hands up, palms up—not a parody of surrender, this time. For real. He came towards me with small, slow steps. The way one would approach a jumper poised at the top of a high rise.

As soon as he was in front of me, he reached a hand out for me and I—

I flinched.

Never in my life had I recoiled from him, like that.

It shocked him, maybe even more than me freaking out before, and he fell back, eyes glass-blown wide and wet.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he said. "I'm sorry. I never should have—fuck. I'm sorry."

I let go of the doorframe, thinking if I could just get past him and get to my bed, close my eyes and get the fuck away from him for a few hours, then we could move past this and put it all in the folder of Fucked-Up Shit We're Not Supposed to Talk About, then wake up in the morning, play this all off as a drunken mistake, and go back to being brothers.

Instead, my fucking quitter knees gave out on me and Dean had to catch me to keep me falling flat on my face.

He hushed me then, shushed me, squashed me into his body and pressed kisses—dry, chaste, _brotherly_ kisses—into my hair.

"I'm sorry," he said, petting all over me like he thought he might never get to touch me again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Sammy, I'm so fucking sorry—"

He somehow managed to heft me onto my bed and shove all my useless limbs under the covers.

"It doesn't—" he tried. Looked physically pained. "We don't have to talk about, um, this. It's nothing, it means _nothing_," he said, smoothing the blanket up to my neck, hands lingering over my chest. He seemed to catch himself there, doing that, looking down at his hand on me like he didn't realize it was still there, his face going crushed and gray like the day he'd zapped his heart, the day he'd tried to die the first time.

He pulled it off me like it was burning. Like I was. "I'm sorry," he repeated, needle stuck in the groove. "I know, I shouldn't have—" he started, but the rest got lost somewhere, the words falling away even as his mouth hung open. He went sheepish instead, scratched at the back of his head.

And if anything in my body was working — apparently getting my heart fucking leveled had knocked the rest of me out of commission — I would've punched him.

Instead I closed my eyes. Kept them there even as he hovered, the worry coming off of him in waves, but finally, _finally_, he got the message. Turned off the lights and crept into bed himself.

I lay there for a long fucking time, staring at the ceiling and trying my damndest not to think. Which just meant, of course, that I couldn't stop.

It meant nothing to Dean.

_Nothing_, he'd said. His mouth on me, his hands, what had felt like love tumbling out of his body and seeping into my skin.

_Nothing_, I scolded my heart. _Nothing_.

His touch didn't mean that he loved me like that. Not that I'd ever wanted him to be my lover or anything, shit, but when he kissed me, it was like, how could I not?

In my head, I saw him as he'd been then, all those years ago with Shannon. His face shining down into mine, the soft smile she'd left there in place. But this time, for me. For me.

"Is that how you know someone loves you?" I remembered asking him once. "'Cause they kiss you?"

The push of his arm around me. The hot brush of his breath over my hair. "No, dude. It's when somebody tells you, when they say it, you know. I love you."

Stop, I told myself, frantic, just fucking stop already—but the thought snuck through anyway.

(_I'm in love with Dean._)

Shit.

Once it was in my head, then, all it wanted was to get out.

"I love you," I whispered.

I waited for the world to crack, for Dean to sit up and tell me to go to hell.

But there was nothing, only the rattle of the old AC and Dean's half-whispered snores.

Laying there in the dark, listening to him breathe like I had every night for most of my life, I realized it even if the world hadn't cracked, something in me had. Something had snapped open the moment that Dean'd kissed me, and I had no idea how to fix it, how to put the pieces back into line.

Because I couldn't stop seeing Dean, on his knees in front of me, then on top of me, the weight of him keeping me from floating away, the feeling of his hand in my hair and his mouth on my throat, and fuck.

I wasn't sure that's what I wanted. To be fixed.


	6. Chapter 6

And then, well.

When Sam was 23, he fell in love with me.

And given how much of an ass I was at the time, it's no wonder he didn't say anything.

I don't know how long he'd felt it, or whatever, but the first time I saw it was right after I almost kicked it again, thanks to your friendly neighborhood dijin and his fucked-up, Mr. Rogers' version of _The Dean Winchester Story._

Sammy, he's what kept me going, kept me from giving in. I had to get back to Sam, my Sammy, the real deal, the one who knew me, who gave me shit all the time without thinking, who yelled at me when I fucked up and sewed me closed every time that I broke.

When I woke up from that place, scrambled back from the edge one more time, that's when it hit me.

I loved him, the little bastard. More than anything—hell, I'd given up a chance at happiness for him, however messed up the dijin-world might have been. And freakin' a, I totally resented that.

Resented that he had me, all of me, always and forever and all that cute Hallmark shit and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it, 'cause it'd always been there. It was part of me, my love for Sam. Fundamental. And there was no getting it out.

My first instinct was to run and hide, to wrap myself in bubble wrap and anti-Sam charms. Love, to me, meant leaving. To me, it was like Dad always said:

You get while the getting's good and you're out. Just in case, you know, you end up dead by morning.

And I'd lived most of my dick-bearing life by that code: _fuck yes, sweetheart, I want you right now. And I know how to make you want me._

All the bullshit with Cassie? My feelings, or whatever? Her sucker shot of rejection? It'd just made freaking clear how right Dad was—on this one point, at least—how right I'd been for so long, to follow that piece of advice.

_You don't get to keep 'em_. Ok. It sucked. But I'd learned how to live with that.

Yeah. Sure I had.

But coming back from the almost-dead that time, the third time, on the floor of that disgusting warehouse, it did something to my head. Like, messed with my programming or something. Maybe I should've looked around for an origami unicorn. I don't know. But suddenly, when I saw Sam's face, felt his arms around my shriveled stick of a body, it was—man. Clear as day.

I loved him. Period. And damn if I was gonna leave him, or let him leave me.

I just couldn't.

Sam was a bitch and a living thorn in my side and the most important goddamn thing in the universe. He was _family_.

He was mine.

All that sounded pretty straight in my brain. Pretty simple. But old habits, ingrained over a decade of easy lays, they took their sweet time to die out.

See, once I got better, could stand without tanking, I went straight back to my bag of tricks and pulled out one of my favorites: Dean Winchester, the recently recovered. The sick. The dude for whom you must care. Must buy drinks. Must suck his aching dick. Yeah. I loved that one because it was a never-fucking-fail, one I'd played to the hilt after my previous run-ins with the reaper, so it seemed like a natural choice.

Fine, I loved Sam. Ok. Awesome. Whatever. He didn't love me, not like the way I did him. Not like he was the northstar and I was a compass and no matter where I turned, what kind of weirdness we wandered through, I was always gonna come back to him.

He didn't love me like that. Which was fine. Hell, he's my brother—not like I could blame him for not seeing me that way, like his own personal, perpetual north. But damn, I still had some basic, want-to-be-adored needs.

Eh. No big deal.

So I shuffled into this sketchy bar in Osage Beach, Missouri—a state with no fucking coastlines, ok—and threw out as much woe is me as I possibly could, aiming for the fine local fauna, with an eye—yeah, I'll admit—towards Sam. You know. Just to see what would happen.

Here's what happened:

He lost his shit.

Stormed off like a fucking twelve year old and left me stranded, that son of a bitch.

I mean, seeing him just up and walk out like that, me with one foot so recently in the grave and all—man.

That son of a _bitch_.

I had to go after him. That dick.

It took me longer to get there than I thought. Not as young as I used to be; the walk back made me feel like a freaking old man, but it did give me time to run his little fit on a loop in my head: Sam scowling. Sam storming away. Sam slamming doors in my face, again and again and again.

And then there was a twist that it matched the stitch in my side as I ran: that fake plastic Sammy from my djin-sponsored dream, this hollow man Sam looming over me, asking me if I was drunk, insisting I was wasted, letting the booze think for me, sneering:

_You're not thinking straight here, Dean._

I turned the corner and got a glimpse of my baby, safe down at the end of the street—and ok, maybe I was a little sloshed given the rush of relief the sight of her sent through me, counterpoint to the way my heart was triple lutzing in my chest at the thought of opening the door to number 18 and seeing a cold, empty room.

_No way_, I thought. No. Not gonna happen, not again, because Sammy was mine, damn it, ever since Dad set him squalling in my arms all those long, long years ago.

And if Sam'd forgotten, I was damn sure gonna remind him.

I barged in, bullhead of steam, and I got in his face a little—ok, kind of a lot. Maybe even shoved him around some, but, shit, all I wanted was a little attention and he'd just freaking bolted and left me all alone.

Sam was pissed, too, and when he spazzed, I tried to give him some space. Tried to take a step back, but oh, of course, then the asshole wants to talk.

He grabbed me, held me tight and glared at me, furious.

"Fuck!" I said. "What the hell is your problem?"

"You!" he shouted. "You're my fucking problem, alright? You almost died, asshole! Again! You were almost dead and gone for the third time in a fucking year and now you just wanna pretend that everything's fine?! That—that you can just spend the rest of your life taking what you need and not caring who you have to hurt to get it!"

Oh, I thought: hammer, meet nail.

Because—he was right.

If anybody had been doing the almost-leaving around here, yeah, ok. It was me.

"Oh," I said, turning the words over, careful. "Well. Dad said a lot of shit, Sam. Believe me, I know. But he was right about one thing, ok? When you find somebody you care about, the kind of lives that we lead, you don't get to keep 'em, period, and there's no use pretending otherwise, no matter how much we might want to." I wrapped my fingers over his wrist where it hung in the collar of my coat. "Gotta say, I thought you of all people would understand that."

There was part of me, not gonna lie, that was pissed at him, still, even as his face went all Gentle Ben and his mouth strayed too close to mine. Part of me kept poking, reminding me that for our whole lives he'd been the one pulling away, always looking for an exit strategy, a way out of whatever Dad wanted, keeping himself miles away, even when he was sitting on the bench seat beside me.

Fuck. He was the one who _had_ left.

But then he said it —the magic fucking words I didn't know I needed to hear:

"I'm still here," he said, quiet, but steady, so fucking steady. My Sam.

My fingers slipped over his jaw, pressed a little at his pulse, at the hum of the blood that we shared. "Yeah," I said through a smile. "Sam. I know. You're the exception, see, that proves the rule."

I've kissed enough, been kissed enough, too, to recognize the feeling that shot between us right then. It's like, no matter who you're holding, man or woman, younger or older than you, in the dark or the middle of the fucking day, there's always that moment of shaky-hot gonna pop when you know you're gonna kiss, that the other one wants to kiss you. That it's only a matter of time.

I didn't have time to think too hard, which was good. To wonder if he loved me the way I did him, or if he just wanted to fuck; all I knew was that feeling, the inevitable, and so I went for it.

I kissed him.

And it was good. Like knee-shaking, fuck-me-now good. Like got on my knees for his beautiful dick, good, and I got lost in it fast, started running my mouth off right away; dirty talk and sweet murmurs and some, ok, semi-elaborate teasing. It's my thing, when I fuck, unless the other person's not into it, but man, Sammy sure was. It was a win-fucking-win, him wound up tight and me wound up even tighter seeing him so close to losing his shit.

But then I—

I said something wrong, I guess. Really, spectacularly wrong.

I was more focused on him than whatever was coming out of my mouth, the way his cock was jerking in my fist, the way his eyes never left mine.

Ok, no. That's pretty much bullshit. I knew exactly what I wanted to say.

What I wanted to say was: I_ love you. I love you, don't leave me, you don't know how bad it was when I didn't have you._

_Love you, Sammy. Love you._

And I was so focused on not saying that, on saying anything but, that I managed to fuck everything up.

I said blah blah blah something about how he'd thrown me off my game, got me so tongue tied yadda yadda that I couldn't land that cute little bartender and, yeah, apparently?

Gigantic mistake.

One minute he was ten seconds from blowing his load and the next he was gone, tossed me off like a sack of potatoes and slammed the bathroom door in my face.

And I deserved it.

I mean, I had no idea why he'd freaked, but hell, he had a dozen to choose from.

Maybe he realized he didn't like screwing guys. Maybe he remembered I was his brother. Maybe, despite my best fucking efforts, something of what I felt had snuck through; maybe he knew. Maybe, even though I hadn't said it, he'd seen it in my face, that I love you, and oh god, that made me sick. But in the end, it didn't really matter, did it, why he'd run away, so I didn't push it. Instead, I tiptoed away from the why and ran right the hell over to sew it up, fix it, make it right.

What's really impressive, though, is that I then managed to make it worse.

I started yakking again, once he scuttled out like a startled rabbit, and told him it meant nothing, what had just almost happened. Brushed it off like a bad hookup between drunken friends. Never said what I really wanted to say, of course:

_I love you._

Nope. I lied to his face.

"It meant nothing," I said. "Nothing. Nothing, Sam."

I thought I was helping. I thought I was making it better, even if every word hurt. Like burning a wound closed—stops the bleeding but scars like a bitch.

Nothing. Nothing.

I'm not sure who I was trying to convince.

As soon as he was in bed, safely out of my reach, I buried my head under all the pillows I could stand and beat myself up but good.

Because Dad never said anything about what you were supposed to do when you loved somebody and they didn't love you back. Not like that.

I had no fucking clue what to do.

XxX

In the morning, I was uncomfortable as hell. Made a point of getting up and out when the light was still gray and stayed gone for a good long while.

I mainlined bad coffee at a cut-rate Denny's and tried to blot out the heat of Sam's hands on my ass, the little beats of his breath as I kissed him, the cut of his hips in my palms as he gave in and fucked my face.

"Sweetheart," I said when Glinda the good waitress came back by. "Why don't you just leave the pot?"

Creamer sugar caffeine on repeat and still, there was Sam, stripping off his jeans and crawling towards me, all that stupid sexy intensity, all of it, zeroed right in on me.

Okay. New plan.

I dropped too much cash on the counter and made for the road. I took my sweet time on the grand tour of Osage Beach, Missouri, up Main and down Lake Drive and back, and I'd never been so happy to see SPEED LIMIT: 25 signs in my life. I had no choice, did I, except to slow down and take in the sights. Such as they were.

There was a pawn shop, for starters, and an Applebee's, an urgent care clinic and a UPS place. A couple of closed-down storefronts. A church. The post office. A tackle shop. Another church, I think, or something with a steeple. A gym. A stationary store.

They were all still there on my second loop. And my third. By the fourth, I was seriously considering a detour to the bar from the night before. Hey, it was almost 10 in the morning. You never know about towns like that, little ones that sit away from the interstate. In my experience, they're either teetotallers or lushes, with very little gray in between. It might have been worth a shot.

But then I drove by the stationery store again, its window full of pastel paper and fancy invitations and it made me all of a sudden think of Sam, damn it. Of how, when he was a kid, he used to love places like that. I could park him in the pen aisle—no, really—for an hour if I had to, and when I came back, he'd walk me through all those colors, all the different shades of blue and purple and black that people still dipped their quills into, apparently. Me, I was happy with a Bic, but Sammy, he loved those fancy-ass pens, all those colors. All those possibilities, I guess.

He even tried to teach himself calligraphy once, when he was in fifth or sixth grade. Bought a fat pad of starchy cream paper to practice on, looping his Ps and outlining his Qs, but he lost interest after a while and ended up drawing in it instead. He used to draw all the time, that kid, went through this phase where he filled the margins of his homework, cheap diner napkins, the covers of his notebooks with these careful little maps of countries, of castles that never existed, of what our house might look like if we ever had one again.

I'd forgotten all about that, until then, all the pretend planning Sammy used to do for our future.

After the fifth loop, I was sick of the sights and turned off another way, driving aimlessly, letting the road rolling under her tires sooth me like a touchstone. I got off the beaten path somewhere, turned her onto a dirt road that wasn't too rough, just to see where it went, until I found myself killing the engine on the skinny banks of a good-sized lake. I turned the music all the way down and listened to Baby tick as she cooled, the sound of the water brushing against the shore a decent metronome for my worried nerves, and looked out across the water. There was a huge two-story house perched on the other shore, snugged right up against the water, the backdoor open onto a porch where some people—a family?—were hanging out, eating and laughing and shit. The whole scene was so like, colorful and alive and fucking domestic that it kind of hurt to look at.

That was when I remembered it: one of the blueprints Sam had done up when he was little, the one of the house he wanted to buy for us, one that sat in three states at once.

"See?" he said in my head, close enough to touch and further than California at once, his fingers dancing over the page. "It'll be here, in just the right place. We can make breakfast in Maryland and take showers in Pennsylvania and watch TV in West Virginia."

He may have been holding the pencil back then, but I'd been the one drawing the lines.

And then we'd flipped, somehow, then I wasn't watching his back and keeping him safe, I was watching him get on a bus to Palo Alto, to the other side of reality, practically; I was watching him leave me behind. The memory was jagged, still, because the bastard hadn't even looked over his shoulder and waved one last time before he was gone. He was just _gone_.

He'd forgotten all about me at that damn sad Greyhound station just like he'd forgotten to make a space for me in that silly dream house of his. Didn't offer me a ticket, didn't beg me to steal the car and run away with him, didn't draw me a room in his pretend future. Didn't even think of me in his life like that. I always had to remind him that I was real, that I was around. Which was a tad ridiculous to me, considering we grew up on top of each other, grew up dressed in my hand-me-downs.

But there was all this complexity in him, my brother. There was the Sam that had been with Jess, the Sam who'd drawn all those houses, the Sam who'd shot Madison, the Sam who'd read until his eyes crossed as a kid, the same Sam who'd kissed me like I was the end-all, like I was all he'd ever wanted. They were all Sam; brilliant, beautiful, naive Sammy who'd been so hopeful because he didn't know how to be any other way. And somewhere inside, he was still that kid, the Sam who didn't realize there was next to no chance we'd ever have a permanent address, we'd ever live somewhere long enough to buy a friggin' mailbox, much less a house.

Thinking of him like that—my sweet, little brother who wanted picket fences and graduate degrees and a fucking nine to five, but above all, wanted love in whatever tattered semblance it came in—that's what made me turn the engine back over, put her into reverse, frame the lake in the rearview mirror and head back to the motel. Even if I'd blown it, blown our chance at more, I could still be his brother, his partner.

I'd take what I could get, 'cause unlike Sammy, I was a realist.

What's funny, I guess, is that there's no one moment when you know the future has started, when what you've known everyday forever slips by you and into the past. I'd never thought about it that way before, exactly, and it gave me a jolt, like a Red Bull right to the spine.

Here we were, Sam and me, in the stupid present, with the Yellow-Eyed Demon's past at our heels and who the fuck knew what up ahead. Maybe we wouldn't get to map out a future like everybody else would; maybe our past was too full of losses, both gigantic and small, to let either of us think past next week. Fine.

Here we were, Sam and me, together, and yeah, the previous night had revised the meaning of "together" maybe. A little. A whole fucking lot. But so what?

And yeah, ok, I'd been a little buzzed, but remembering the heat of Sammy's breath on my neck, the way his hair stuck flat to his forehead as I jerked his cock, the way his head fell back hard as his mouth moved without sound—I'd fucked around a lot, got up close and personal with a lot of people between the sheets, and I could tell the damn difference between the look that said get me off and the one that said I love you.

"Shit!" I shouted. I banged the wheel with my fist, hard, too hard, blasting her horn like a tuba and earning myself a WTF? from the lady in the Honda behind me and, and, I almost missed the turn into the motel parking lot, because, hey: holy shit was I an idiot.

Seriously. I should have got a medal or something, for being that freaking blind.

I swerved into the first spot I saw and bolted down the lot, booking it towards room number 2.

Sam wasn't pissed because he didn't care about me.

He was fucking furious because he did.

"It meant nothing," I'd said. "Nothing. Nothing, Sam."

Yeah, genius move there, dickweed, I thought, kicking myself in the mental teeth. Say the worst possible thing at the worst possible time with the most important person in your life. All the girls that've come before, Shannon and Cassie and all the no-names on either side, they were just the warm-up act, the JV squad, the club team, and bam! You take one step into the big leagues, into sex with someone you really love, and what do you do, asshat? You fuck it up completely but good, and oh, extra bonus, you probably stomped on Sam's heart in the process. Nice work.

The curtains in our room were still drawn. I thought maybe Sam was still sleeping. Good. That meant we could get things straight right away, let him start the day off right, with me saying—

I grabbed the doorknob and took a deep breath.

—-saying what I'd always meant, damn it, even when I couldn't find the words.

I jammed the key in the lock finally and turned. "Sam, hey, look, I'm sorry," I said—

To an empty fucking room.

No Sam. No note. Zip. Big fat zero.

I went down on the dingy carpet and stared at the wall for a while, at the space where Sam should have been.

"No room for me, huh, Sammy?" I asked, oh, no one in particular.

Yeah. I got no reply.

Truth be told, I was pretty damn sure I didn't deserve one.


	7. Chapter 7

When I woke up that morning, that awful morning after Dean kissed me, after I let him throw me down, let myself believe that his hands on my body meant something big, something important, something good—

That awful morning after Dean touched me and it meant nothing, he said, nothing more than a way to get off like any other random person he'd picked up with a wink and half-whispered promise of no more than one night

—when I woke up, Dean was gone.

And I felt like a kid, like I had at 17, powerless in the face of somebody else's choices, in the face of a life somebody else had chosen for me.

It was obvious that this wasn't going to be just another thing we ignored with Winchester ease. Another thing swept under the rug to never be discussed again: like Mom's life, Dad's death, our fucked-up existence in general, me on a bus to Cali and the subsequent four years we tried to pretend the other—our brother—didn't really exist.

For all of that, this had the potential to be a million times worse.

Forget elephants. This was a fucking wendigo in the room, sharpening its teeth and looking for a place to bite.

I knew Dean. I knew he would let us snap back to brotherhood without bringing up our attempted hookup ever again. I knew he would. We could just go back—back to bickering over what to have for breakfast and who did laundry last and which jobs to take—but I also knew we'd just be going through the motions: _The Adventures of Sam and Dean_, minus the laugh track.

It was just like me to take our relationship, partnership, what the hell ever and run it straight into the ground.

And I wasn't sure if I could take it - I mean, living with Dean every fucking day after failing that spectacularly. Wasn't sure if my stupid, angry heart could take it. Because as much as I tried to force down all those feelings of _love_ and _want_ and _need_ and drown the thousands of razor-edged butterflies combing out of my stomach and clawing into my veins—I just couldn't.

Because, in spite of everything, in spite of being dead, there was Dad's voice—this permanent unwelcome guest in my head—always mucking shit up. Always piping in with his uninvited advice, saying helpful things like _you don't get to keep them_.

It seemed so harsh at the time—when Dad had sat Dean down all those years ago and effectively broken his heart—but, in the perfect vision of hindsight, Dad was right, no one stays forever. And yeah, okay, I understood it then, but it got muddled inside of me: the imperfect canvas of memory drawing over it with all these other moments and as I waded through them that morning, stumbling for the shower in fucking Osage Beach, Missouri, one kind of stuck out to me.

This one memory of sitting at a hotel table with Dad and Dean when I was 17, Dad's guns in clean pieces between us, listening to him talk about tracking a werewolf pack in Utah that summer, right after my high school graduation, one he and Bobby had had ears on for months.

He sat back, turning an oily rag in his hands, as he spoke. "Now's the time to move," he said to Dean direct, like I wasn't even there, wasn't close enough for him touch. "now that we'll have Sam with us full time, we'll finally have the manpower to take those bastards down, no problem."

I got really cold when he said that, like hoarfrost collecting on my bones, turning it all over in my head: working a case with Dad and Dean, everyday, all day, all days, until all those days melted into one long, endless dark hunt, littered with grubby motels and greasy food and my knees bruising themselves against the back of the Impala's front seat, taking orders from Dad. _Forever_. For the rest of my life.

So, yeah, we couldn't keep anyone, but hunting would keep us.

I couldn't handle it, that image, a vision of a horrible possible future that made me feel sick.

"Right, Sam?" Dad said, an afterthought, only it wasn't a question.

Dean tapped me on the knee under the table—the warning one that meant _don't be an idiot, Sam_—and it was all I could do to meet Dad's eyes and say, "Yes sir," instead of losing my dinner on my shoes.

All the monsters that I knew lurked out in the night, they couldn't instill fear in me like that, couldn't make me feel like I was on the verge of suffocating on an endless, nowhere road for the rest of my long nothing life. Not like Dad could.

Vampires and ghouls and ghosts, I knew how to kill. But a future filled with nothing but vengeance and Dad's unforgiving standards of what it meant to be a man and Dean, god; watching Dean lose himself in the future Dad had drawn out for us when we were just little kids—I couldn't.

In the end, hunting became the biggest monster of them all, the one I couldn't fight, couldn't kill, and so I did the only that I could: I ran.

To California, where it was warm and beautiful, where nobody judged me for who I was or what I did or who I might want to be. To California, where I was just Sam, not Sam Winchester whose mother was dead, whose father was crazy; not Sammy, whose big brother was Dean. At Stanford, for the first time in my whole fucking life, I was just Sam.

And the more time that I spent there, under the palm trees, in the lecture halls, in the library, it got harder and harder for me to understand it, the paradox that made up our lives: we worked so hard to protect the normalness of other people, why couldn't we have a piece of that for ourselves? Surely we'd earned it. We must have. Damn it. _I_ had.

For a while, the future was mine. I was the one drawing the lines.

But then, we'd switched somehow. He'd come back and I'd gone with him and now I was in love with the son of a bitch who'd a) tried to use me as an easy fuck and b) run out without saying a word.

Great.

I turned my face into the spray, cursing. Banged my fists against the tile because I wasn't a kid anymore, wasn't somebody who could play along and nod and pretend to be OK with bullshit that was so clearly not. No. I couldn't, I fucking _wouldn't_, pretend that everything was ok, that Dean was just my idiot brother, just a guy who shared my blood, when I knew how he tasted, how he laughed through his kisses, how his fist got so tight on my cock—

But he'd tucked me in—like he had my whole damn life—and said: _it was nothing, Sammy. Nothing._ His hands ghosting over me, checking; our skin not touching, his eyes everywhere but in mine. That gap between us, just the width of that stupid blanket; nothing in the grand scheme of the world and yet more than either of us was willing to cross.

So of course when I woke up, he was gone.

Not for good; that much was clear. His shit was still all over the bathroom counter: his hair gel, a half-decent razor he stole from Walgreens, some Flintstone vitamins, a handful of clean Q-tips. His toothbrush. A squashed box of condoms. A plastic dinosaur from McDonalds with two missing teeth. I had to dig through all of it, the many varied and assorted detritus of my brother, of Dean, to find my freaking aftershave.

I scrubbed the steam from the mirror and stared, searching for some sign of this massive shift in my own personal corner of reality. The mirror was bigger and my heart was darker but it reminded me of the morning after I first slept with Jess. There'd been a box of condoms on the counter then, too, on the edge of her tiny little dorm sink, torn open and promising more nights to come, more chances to watch Jess' face flutter, her mouth turn upwards and in as her fingernails bit into my neck and she said something that might be my name.

That had been a good morning, important, and I knew it was dumb and totally not logical but I couldn't help it, couldn't help but lean over the sink, then, and study my reflection for some sign, some mark, that the world as I knew it had changed.

Of course there wasn't, not really, but I felt different; better, in the best possible way. I loved her and she loved me and I'd known that before I'd slid inside her, but that morning, grinning into my own image, I'd _known_ it: she loved me and I loved her and that was more than enough.

I'd been so happy; it was almost strange to think about. They felt like memories of another person, a lifetime that belonged to somebody else, but the funny thing was that my reflection in that chipped mirror in Osage Beach, Missouri, that awful morning after: that Sam was smiling, too.

I could almost feel Jess behind me for a moment, the slip of her arms around my waist and her hand stretched up in my hair.

"Hey," she'd whispered that morning, pinning her grin in my back. "Come on, honey. Come back to bed."

I turned Dean's razor in my hands. Picked up his toothbrush. The stupid pink dinosaur.

Jess, she wasn't here anymore. Neither was Madison. All of the girls I'd kissed as a kid, knowing they were all temporary. They were gone, each and every one, and maybe that was my fault. Or maybe it was just the way of things, loving and losing like that. Not everyone's first love burned on the ceiling, died before their fucking eyes. Not everyone had to shoot a girl that you knew you could have loved, if only there were more time, true, but everybody, I realized then, lightning bolt of no shit: everybody loses somebody. Nobody gets to keep everyone that they love. The world, for all of its mysteries and general fucked-upittude, it's not designed for permanence. Everything changes. People move on or break up or they make it work, somehow, tie themselves to each other and hang on as long as they can.

I dropped Dean's crap back on the counter and shot into the room, reaching for clean boxers, my jeans, my brain going a mile a minute with my heart jogging along beside.

_You don't get to keep them_, Dad sang in my head, and yeah, ok, the old bastard was right. You don't, hunter or not. Nobody does.

But Dad, he'd taken the wrong lesson away from that, the inevitability of loss:

Instead of pushing people away—taking the basics and leaving the emotional bullshit behind— I wanted to hold people close, breath them in, enjoy them, _love_ them for as long as I could because no one, hunter or accountant or Sunday School teacher, knows how much time they've got.

I'd had love and lost it, searched for it and come up empty, but now, damn it, I—

I loved Dean, that idiot, even if he didn't feel that way about me, and I sure as fuck wasn't gonna let him get away with not at least acknowledging that he was a moron if he couldn't see it: how good the two of us could be together.

I felt like I was 17 again, in the moment when I realized that despite my father's best efforts, I still had a choice about what my future could look like.

I laced my boots and hit the door, restless and jonesing for coffee and the chance to set the record straight.

I really, really needed to talk to Dean.

But I could wait. He'd come back to me, sooner or later. He always did.

The desk clerk pointed me towards a gas station about a half a mile up the road. The coffee was cheap and terrible—exactly what I needed—and I took my time coming back, gnawing on a stale pastry and dodging the dust passing semis kicked up at my feet.

I felt—good. Surprisingly calm, the razor-winged butterflies soothed to sleepy soft moths in my gut even when I turned the corner and spotted the Impala resting in the parking lot, which had to mean:

Dean.

He was sitting on the floor when I keyed in, his back pressed into his bed, slumped over and staring at the wall. He didn't look at me, even when I closed the door, when there was no way he couldn't have heard, couldn't have know I was there.

I let it sit for a second, uncertain.

"Dude," I said. "Dean. You ok?"

He shrugged. "Feeling like shit, actually." He laughed, sort of, this bitter burst of sound. "Gotta say, I'm surprised you're even speakin' to me, Sammy."

I didn't actually know what to say at first. It's easy to hold conversations with people in your head, but once you're actually looking at them, it all kind of goes out the window. Dean was wrecked: in wrinkled clothes, a day's worth of stubble scraped across his jaw, and bonus: he wouldn't look at me. Stared down at his hands instead, like there was some grand answer written in the lines. I wanted to take them in mine and just freaking say it already: _hey, you moron, I love you._

I didn't, though. Instead I said, "Dean, are we okay?" Because you have to start somewhere.

He let his hands go limp but still didn't look up. "Yeah," he said, defeated. "We're okay."

"Bullshit," I shot back, off-the cuff. Surprised us both.

His eyes flicked to mine, face mussed into hurt, confusion. I understood the feeling.

"We're not okay. We… Dean, we, uh. We almost—" I fumbled, even felt my skin getting hot, turning red. Laying it out like that felt ridiculous but something had to be said.

He cut me off, face mirroring my own. "Yeah, I know, ok, I know what we—" He made a face, like the words had a bad taste. "Sammy. I'm sorry."

"You're—?" I said, the incredulous sneaking right up in my voice.

He ducked his head again and I could see the flush burning to the tops of his ears. "Fuck. I said it, ok? I'm sorry already. No need to rub salt in it, ok?"

I went down on my knee, bam, right in front of him.

"You need to shut the hell up," I said.

That got his attention.

His eyes snapped to mine. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," I hissed, shoving a hand into his chest. "Stop running your damn mouth for ten seconds, why don't you, and _listen_ to me."

He grabbed at my wrist, furious. "What part of _I'm sorry_ do you not understand?" he barked. "Goddamn it. I'm trying here, but you're being a—"

He rocked into me, trying to stand, but I grabbed his shoulder and planted him hard. Made sure we were on the same level. Which just made him madder, made the bull come all the way out in his face.

I shook him a little, watched the green in his eyes ricochet. "I'm gonna say this once," I said. "I'm gonna get all the way through it and you're gonna fucking _be quiet_, you hear me?"

He glared at me, sure, but he kept his trap shut.

"Look," I said, fast, before I could lose my nerve. "Remember when we had to leave that shit town in Maryland when you were in high school? When you were dating that girl named Shannon?"

Dean went really still under my hands. "Yeah," he said, careful.

"And you"—crap, it was harder than I thought to say this right to his face—"you like, loved her, right? And Dad told you that you—"

My mouth stopped moving, and the silence hung in the air for a second. I realized how close we were, how warm he was under my hands. How much I wanted to kiss him. But—

"'You don't get to keep people,'" Dean said softly. His eyes flickered with something gentle-like, and his fingers on my wrist shifted until his thumb was pressed into my pulse.

There was a heartbeat between us. Then two.

"Yes," I said, finally. "And he was right, ok? He was _right_. We don't get to keep people, but fuck, Dean. No one does." I grabbed his face in both hands and he swayed, lids fluttering as I touched him. "But we can have _this_," I said, "now, while it's here. While we're both here. If that's—if it's what we both want."

His mouth curved, the sly little arch I'd seen a thousand times. "If," he repeated.

"Yeah, if, I mean—"

He stopped my mouth with a kiss, as Shakespeare might say.

This one was different than any he'd laid on me the night before: it was slow and easy, gentle, like we had all the time in the world to touch. I mean, I was still balanced on my knees and he was leaning up into me at this obtuse angle, but it was good, the way that he kissed me; warm and awkward and sweet.

When I tipped back, he was laughing, little huffs of breath across my chin.

"What?" I said, my mouth still stupid from his.

He shoved me away and hopped up, grinning like a freaking hyena.

"C'mon, Sammy," he said, making for the door. "I got somethin' to show you."

And bam, he was out of there so fast that all I could do was tagalong behind.

"Dude," I said, for the tenth time in five minutes. "Seriously. Where are we—?"

He held up a hand this time and didn't bother to answer. Just waved it around all mysterious in a way that said _patience, young Padawan._

We were bumping down a gravel road, one that cut off the nice, paved Lake Drive and shot down into the forest. I could hear the rocks bouncing off the car's frame, and Dean must've heard it, too, but he didn't even flinch.

It was sort of bizarre, but in the grand scheme of the last 24 hours, hell. That was normal.

The trees started to spread out and the road went from gravel to dirt with no warning and then, they we were: perched on the edge of pretty nice looking lake, deep blue in the afternoon sun. Across the way were big McMansion-type houses with sleek looking boats tied up at their docks. On our side, though, there was nothing, it seemed like: just sawgrass, a slip of rocky shoreline, and us.

"Holy shit," I said.

Dean turned to me, beaming, and fucking bounded out of the car like a overgrown Labrador, shaking his head as he ran. It was maybe ten steps to the water, to the short little waves, and he had his shoes off before I could catch him, was sinking his feet in with a sigh.

I shucked my boots and waded in after, the water licking over my ankles, warm and fast. He was standing in the shallows, close enough to the shore that his body was half-draped in shadow from the wiry trees that arched out over us.

"You ever think about living in a house like that?" he said, Captain Non Sequitur.

"Uh," I said, squinting out over the waves "Huh. I'm not sure."

He smiled at me over his shoulder. "Really? None of those architectural nightmares you used to draw ever had a lake view?"

I laughed. "I don't think I knew what a 'lake view' was then, dude. There was one with a dragon, though, once. Oh, and one with a moat. That was cool."

He snorted and turned back to the view, to the layers of opulence draped across the other shore. "I liked the one in three states. Remember that? Where you like took a shower in Maryland and had breakfast in Pennsylvania, or something?"

I had a flash of smeary pencil lines, of Dean's finger there, tracing. "Yeah," I said. "Sure. I remember."

His shoulders shifted, and something in the bow of his back made me wonder what we were really talking about here. "You, ah," he said. "I had to remind you to make a room for me in that one." He shook his head, more at the waves than at me. "Forgot all about me there, kiddo."

The shadow in his voice, the little hint of real sadness, took the sting of my ancient nickname. "Dude," I said. "No way. I didn't forget you. I just"—I blushed for the sake of long-ago me. Why the hell hadn't I told the truth then?—"I figured you'd be with me. That we'd share the same room, you know? Always had. Didn't occur to me to, like, draw you your own."

Dean turned around in slow motion, his face all lit up in Technicolor. "Really?"

"Yeah, I mean—what difference does it make? I don't—"

He laughed, this loud happy bark laced through with relief. "Never mind. It doesn't matter, just—" He bit his lip and he turned away again, his body pulling up tense.

"Sam," he said, after a minute. "There's no 'if' with me here, ok?"

Something in me went _whoosh_, a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

"Yeah," I said. "Ok."

He reached back without looking and grabbed my hand; squeezed it so tight that it hurt. "I just—" said, and I could hear how hard he was trying to make the words come. "I just wanna be clear on this."

The wind shifted and the water leapt up, catching the edge of my jeans. I shot my fingers through his and held on. Just to be clear.

He made a noise swallowed up by the sunlight and rolled into me, smooth, like we were doing some waterlogged tango. Our feet tangled in the water, my arms coming up to meet him, his face pressing into my throat. Not a kiss. Something deeper.

"I love you," he said, his lips wet and sweet on my skin. "You're a bitch and the bane of my fucking existence and if you ever leave me again, you bastard, so help me—" His voice caught on the threat and he shivered, almost in time with the wind. "I love you, Sammy. How about that?"

Across the way, the boats bobbed in the water, eager, like they were itching to get out on the waves, and I thought of Dean's necklace, the little boat charm that he'd bought for Shannon, that I'd watched him throw away, all those damn years ago, watched him toss in that thin, stringy creek. Hanging on to Dean, right then, right there, his nails in my back as he hummed in my ear, it felt like that little charm had found us, bobbed back up to meet us at just the right time.

I didn't say any of that to Dean. Not then. Instead, I turned my head down and pressed my mouth into his, teased his lips with my teeth until he sighed something like _bossy_ and let me suck on his tongue.

I dragged him back to the car, through the shallows and the rocks, and pressed him into the hood. Kissed him until he was gasping for air and yanked his jeans open. His face bloomed above me, shocked red and wild.

"Sammy," he breathed as I pulled the damn things down his thighs. "Didn't think you had it in you."

"What?" I said, teasing his slit with my fingers. "Sucking your dick?"

"Holy—!" he gasped, his cock pumping its fist in my face. "Shit. No, I mean, out here, in the open, I—"

I rolled my eyes and grabbed him, his skin hot and smooth in my fist. Licked my way around the head and shut him up. Well, stopped him saying words, anyway.

He shoved his hand in my hair and let me set the pace. Just leaned back with a grin and let me love him. I watched his face twist, cut into edges of pleasure I'd never seen there before. I listened to his breathing roll up short and choppy as he got closer, as I found just the right pressure and suck to drag him right to edge.

"Sam," he said through clenched teeth, big fat dinner plate eyes. "_Sam_, fuck, I'm gonna—"

He came loud and sloppy with a smile that hung there even after I kissed him, let him taste himself on my tongue.

"I love you," I said, folding myself around him. "Dean. How about that?"

"How about," he panted right my ear, "you get your giant ass in the backseat and let me jerk you off? Because I really fucking want to see you come."

He pushed me into the leather and crowded up into my lap, one hand braced next to my head as he teased me, licked his fingers and jerked my cock. He crooned in my ear until I lost it, my hands clawing his hips and his name in my mouth making the windows shake.

"Oh," he said, teeth on his lips, his eyes locked on my face, his fingers still moving over my cock. "Fuck, you're loud, huh? Wow. Ok. Good to know."

I shook my head and slid my hand over his thigh. Pressed my palm into his crotch until he gasped.

"You got another one in you, old man?"

He gave me this beautiful, frustrating grin and batted my hand away. Reached for his zipper.

"Hell yeah, I do, baby. Tell me how bad you wanna see it."

"I wanna see it," I answered, automatically, 'cause holy hell, did I ever. I had him. I wasn't going to let him fuck it up this time.

We stayed out there for a long time, wound together in the back, sticky and stupid with each other as the lake sang to itself, the waves falling back from the shore. The afternoon crested and started to fade, until the first fireflies were flicking around us, little drops of light in the gathering dark.

He drove her gingerly over the gravel, his hands tight on the wheel until we hit asphalt. There were streetlights and other cars and real life—well, our version of it, anyway—lurking just up ahead.

"So," I said, my hand bumping over his shoulder. "Where we going?"

He shot me a look. "Eh," he said, with a smile I could feel more than see. "I dunno, Sam. What do you say we go home?"

I caught my hand in his shirt and held on as hard as I could. "Yeah," I said. "Home. That sounds good."

He patted my leg and turned up the radio and I thought, maybe we were already there.

XxX

(A/N: This was coauthored by the lovely and talented Catchclaw, so if you like it, you should check out the rest of her work over on Ao3. Thanks for reading.)


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